


Blood Red Crimson Hearts (NFWMB)

by xeniaraven



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, BAMF Anakin, Bathing/Washing, Blood, Bottom Anakin Skywalker, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Collars, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Dreams and Nightmares, Eventual Happy Ending, Face-Fucking, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, Kyber Crystals, Leashes, M/M, Minor Character Death, Possessive Behavior, Sith AU, Sith Anakin Skywalker, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, Throne Sex, Top Obi-Wan Kenobi, handjobs, light light light bondage, we talk about our feelings in this household
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xeniaraven/pseuds/xeniaraven
Summary: There are moments that define us. Choices we all must make as we move forward in life. Choices Anakin Skywalker has made that will forever alter his path as a Sith, under the guidance of Emperor Kenobi. How destructive are they as a couple, ruling together on the throne forever? How are their lives as two of the most powerful Sith?Or: how Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side, and how they both devoured each other in more ways than one. Inspired by the lyrics of NFWMB by Hozier.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 74
Kudos: 180





	1. Verse 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello loves. Welcome to my first ever Sith AU that I am extremely happy to bring to you. There are 7 chapters total, each a snippet into their lives. They all move as one story, but each chapter will have a bit of a jump. It'll make sense once we get into it. 
> 
> More tags will be added later, and the rating will increase as well. Nothing too horrible will be happening here but I will be sure to state if something that might be a little "nope" pops up at the beginning of every chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy! Directly inspired by each stanza of NFWMB which is indeed one of my favorite Hozier songs. That man has feral lyric energy and I'm just trying to recreate it y'all. Also a big thank you to Tomicaleto for reading this over for me. Go check out their work too!

The Force has only ever cried out twice in Obi-Wan’s entire life. These rare, deafening moments have carved a mark into the deepest parts of his signature, have bound him to one man with whom the Force has made it known he must remain with forever. When the Force cries, all who are part of her listen to her wails, feel her in the deepest part of themselves as some natural instinct. The need to fix what has been broken, what has shattered that in which they are created from, is the only point in their brains. 

The first time Obi-Wan heard her cry he was on Tatooine, meeting with another Sith lord, trying to figure out the numbers his side of the war had. He wanted information on the whereabouts of each Master and their Apprentice, of who had gone rogue, and who could be manipulated into joining them. 

He crashed to the ground as the scream rang through his ears, pierced through his every blood cell and nerve ending. Between each sob, each cry of her, only one word registered in his brain:

Anakin. 

Others in the cantina complained of just a small headache, or a feeling of dread seeping so deep into their bones they didn’t know how they would ever remove it. Obi-Wan was desperate for it to stop, for the pain that had a vice grip around his spine to give and let him breathe once again. Finally, the Force fell silent, and eerie kind of quiet that only comes before an impactful decision. The quiet that comes as every collective being holds its breath in anticipation of the galaxy changing. 

Every speeder outside the door came to a halt, every tongue ceased to speak, as one lone figure walked down the center of town past every merchant and household that wished to live in the heart of Mos Espa. The figure wore Jedi robes, but he was no Jedi anymore. Blood stained every inch of him, a handprint wrapping around his face, the downward smear of it an indication that he had won that battle. The ruby red, the innocence of blood that wasn’t meant to be shed, dripped down between his fingertips, creating a trail of death, a walk of fury.

His hands wrapped around the body of an older woman. Her hair, seemingly just starting to grey, billowing in the breeze created by his long struts, was the only sign that at one point she had been alive. Even with his strong posture, like a ship’s mast held high amidst a raging storm, his face didn’t hold the same strength. A kind of triumphant tiredness, a battle won that he wished hadn’t happened in the first place, settled deep into the lines of his face. 

Mothers and children had all frighteningly ran inside, the deep crimson of the man’s Force signature nipping at their feet in a game of fear. Nothing about this man was being restricted. He had succumbed to the dark side of the Force, and perhaps would become its most powerful user if he wasn’t already. The edges of his Force signature halted at the edge of Obi-Wan’s, investigating him. At the same point, he physically halted, his legs finally giving and sinking into the sand below him. He let the body roll out of his arms to the ground, a small sob escaping his lips 

_He has escaped death,_ Obi-Wan thought. _But death seems to be what he wanted all along._

Obi-Wan cautiously came before him, motioning for the man he was meeting with to take the body away from view. The man sobbing in the sand protested, snarling and clawing at each person that dared to touch her, to take her from his view. He was a feral man of dark energy, uncontained and ravaged by all it had to offer him. How he survived the onslaught of this unquenchable pit of anger was beyond Obi-Wan, but yet again he had his own pit within him, one that was known to slip into reality if he wasn’t careful.

“Anakin, is it?” The posh ring of Obi-Wan’s voice made the man snap his head in his direction, shoulders slumping down, releasing their tension. “I have heard your name is Anakin. Am I correct in the assumption?”

He watched Obi-Wan cautiously, Obi-Wan aware that the rage he had felt in his Force signature was starting to calm, almost invisible now. It was rare to feel someone so strongly as he felt this man. Force signatures were personal, and yet his was as familiar as the back of his own hand, the freckles that dotted his shoulders. It was something Obi-Wan had never encountered, and before him knelt a man that fascinated him the same way that words did. A man desperate to be read in his entirety, and might have just found someone who spoke his language. 

“Yes. Anakin.” He finally spoke, his words cracking, most likely from being silent long enough to carry his mother however long he had walked. 

“Anakin, dearest. What happened here?”

With Anakin’s gaze locked fully on Obi-Wan, others were able to finally bring the woman’s body to the side of the street, keeping her out of view of children that might feel it safe enough to come out of their huts. There was no disrespect behind it, simply a necessity to keep peace, and to keep Anakin away from any suspecting eyes.

“They murdered my mother,” he growled out, pinpricks of tears hitting the corners of his eyes. “And I slaughtered them. Like _animals_.”

“Who killed her, Anakin? Who took your mother from you?” Obi-Wan reached a very tentative hand out to Anakin to touch his shoulder, lessening the distance between them. He could feel Anakin shaking beneath his touch, once it seemed he would allow it, the tremors an aftershock of whatever earthquake had wrecked this man’s core, shaking every remnant that he had tried to settle. 

“The Tusken Raiders. They, they stole her away and-,” he was crying openly now, shaking his head as if somehow he could erase the truth from the world by telling it no. By shaking his head no so violently it would erase everything. “They did horrible things to my mother and-and left her tied up for dead in their hut! But no one cared! No one cared because she’s a slave!”

Anakin was screaming into the street, a few light objects beginning to shake on the table again as his Force signature roared back to life. The crimson enraged and begging to break something, perhaps to break Anakin himself if it would let him. 

“And what do you wish now?” Obi-Wan asked, placing his finger gently under Anakin’s chin and pulling his face back up to lock eyes again with him. “What would grant you peace?”

Anakin looked at him in shock, blue eyes wide and trembling, looking frantically across all of Obi-Wan’s features, even inwardly at his own heart. Obi-Wan had never seen a man so conflicted in his entire life: a man so worried about his choice that he didn’t even have the free will to say no.

“They wouldn’t let me come here,” he croaked out as Obi-Wan slid his thumb across Anakin’s cheek, catching the tears that were still rolling down it like an endless stream of sorrow finally breaking the dam. 

“You wish revenge?” Obi-Wan was still cautious, aware that Anakin was a live wire willing to snap at any moment. As unhinged as he was right now, it wouldn’t take much for Anakin to overpower him, and it wouldn’t take much for Obi-Wan to lose his own control.

“No!” Anakin was filled with rage, a furious storm that couldn’t decide it’s path, posture back to being stiff as a board, the energy radiating off of him sending shivers up Obi-Wan’s back. But it quieted, slunk back inside of him like a monster retreating to its cave. The man was already learning control, coming back to whatever training he had before. “They’re my family. I… I can’t hurt them. But I know what I unleashed and I can’t go back.”

“Then come forward,” Obi-Wan was already moving to stand, reaching a hand down to Anakin in offering. “Come with me. You’ll always have a home.”

“We need- we need to bury her,” Anakin said, avoiding Obi-Wan’s outstretched hand, looking towards where his mother’s body lay. “We need to bury her.”

It became a mantra, spoken over and over again as if by saying it one more time the twists and turns of fate might split and she would simply roll over, alive yet again. She would pick him up in her arms and finish the phrase, a full _I love you_ singing to Anakin’s ears and giving him back the last person he believed loved him truly and fully. 

He clawed at the sand, desperate to get back over to her side after recognizing that she had been moved. His fingers couldn't find grip, crawling across the sand in a frenzied state that Obi-Wan couldn't even call panicked. It was chaotic. A sorrow so deep he hardly looked human anymore, his humanity fading at each moment he continued to see her lie there.

"We will bury her dearest. She shall have a proper burial."

Obi-Wan came to his side again, crouching on his haunches and moving his hand to brush the hair out of the dead woman's face before Anakin caught his wrist. He dug bruises into his skin, fingernails digging so far into Obi-Wan's wrist he thought he might break it; snap it in half with his own anger. 

"Don't touch her," he snarled, his anger shouting into the Force far enough that small objects were beginning to shake. The fruit standing behind them wobbled from nothing but Anakin's reckless energy. Obi-Wan could barely keep his own anger contained with Anakin's Force presence pushing against his, but something about it was off. It was still searching him, the Force allowing it to poke and prod at every available space. He remained curious, barriers up but ensuring that Anakin could still wander if he'd like, could still let this rage find solace within the boundaries of his mind. 

"What was her name?" Obi-Wan asked, moving his hand away from the woman and instead to Anakin, tucking his Padawan braid back behind his shoulder. He'd have to cut it off before they left, but his mind flooded with all the ways he could command him just from a tug of hair. A rough grab at what once deemed him a Jedi in training. A good man. 

"Shmi," he cried. "My- my mother's name was Shmi. Skywalker is our family name."

"Now Anakin, where is your father in all this? Can he not protect you? Help you? Or did he sell your mother away for gambling money and leave you two to rot?" That was always a good line, something to really tug at repressed memories and turn even the most wonderful of people to his team, to his side. He wouldn't be losing this one back to the Jedi, not after the strength he had seen. 

Anakin stared down at the sand before he finally looked back over to his mother’s body. Pain flooded his features and signature yet again before he reached across her body to grab her cold hand, running his thumb over her skin, as if he could soothe her soul, wherever it lived in the Force now. 

“I don’t have a father,” Anakin whispered out. “I’m a child of the Force.”

“Immaculate conception. How intriguing.”

“If that’s the only reason you’re interested in me then get lost, bantha fodder,” Anakin spat.

“Never. Death is not a concept I take lightly, Anakin. I may be a Sith, but that does not mean I lust over the death of others.”

“Then what do you lust over?” Anakin stood with his mother’s body in his arms again, staring at Obi-Wan as he adjusted her weight in his hands. At least Anakin had the decency to finally wrap her in his robe to keep prying eyes away, and innocent eyes from losing their childhood too quickly. 

“That’s a question for perhaps a more intimate occasion,” Obi-Wan smirked, following Anakin as they walked out of town and towards the makeshift graveyard at the edge of it. 

“Comedy? After a death?” Anakin jabbed back, his Force presence running to his side like a fox, knowing its dependency on him for survival. Slowly it seeped back into him, shoving his posture up straighter, giving him the strength to continue his walk. 

“I thought after your fury, we could all use a bit of lightness.”

“Lightness from a Sith. What an interesting idea.”

“We are all born in the light Anakin,” Obi-Wan came rushing to his side, wanting to stand next to him rather than be stuck walking in his shadow. “Some of us choose the darkness for ourselves. What have you ever chosen?”

Anakin stopped cold in his tracks. Obi-Wan could feel the seed he planted in his mind growing, the turmoil it was creating once he finally took one forceful step forward again, working quickly to keep pace with Obi-Wan. He could feel the lack of an answer settling between the cracks of Anakin’s soul, the way he so desperately wished he had an answer of when he had been given a choice and had chosen something for himself, but he couldn’t find an example at the moment. 

“What happens if I choose to go with you?” Anakin’s voice was full of a somber kind of wonder. The same wonder felt when a horrifying ordeal was broadcasted about the holos, and you had to sit and wonder if anyone survived. Wonder if surviving was the best possible scenario. 

“I will have you do one thing before we leave, if you decide. But if you come with me, I’ll have you be my apprentice for a short while. You’ll have a home. A family amongst myself and the other Sith. And, if things go according to plan, an Empire to rule with Darth Sidious. You’ll have _freedom_ ,” he let the world roll off his tongue like sticky sweet syrup, let it sink into Anakin’s mind like an infection. He wanted freedom, now he was offered it in its entirety. 

They didn’t speak the rest of the walk to the cemetery. They didn’t speak as they buried Shmi’s body in the sand. As Anakin knelt before her grave, singing out a song Obi-Wan had never heard before. Between his weeping sobs it sounded almost like a lullaby, something he had memorized as a kid. He sang the verse over and over again into the sand, kissing the top of the makeshift headstone they had made for her grave.

He whispered apologies into the sand, pleading for forgiveness from a woman that wouldn’t give it to him anymore. It felt as if the entire world wept around him, the energy rolling off his back like a raging storm that couldn’t be settled. No sacrifice, no offering to this god, this Anakin, could calm him back to the light again. Part of Obi-Wan pained for this man. That this was the way he had to be found. But then again, what member of the Sith had a good reckoning into their dark powers?

“You said,” Anakin finally asked over his shoulder after an hour or so, the only indication of time passing being the twin suns lowering on the horizon. “You said I needed to do something before we left.”

“I need you to complete something that proves to me you’re serious. That you won’t betray me.”

“If I can’t do it? If I say no?”

Obi-Wan swung his hand out in a grand gesture to the sand before them, pointing towards the never-ending horizon and a few short cliffs that poked their peeks out into the sky.

“You’re welcome to walk the vast Dune Sea and meditate until the light returns to you. But I can’t guarantee you’ll survive that long.”

“What do you need me to do?” He turned in the sand, leaning in front of Obi-Wan who came to sit in the sand before him. Something about this man made him uncomfortable standing above him, being above him. The Force rang that they were equals on every level, and Obi-Wan wasn’t about to disobey she who had created him. 

“Do you have your lightsaber with you?”

“You’re not asking me to… to-”

“Yes Anakin. It’s a rite of passage for all Sith,” Obi-Wan called Anakin’s saber to him, watching it clip off his belt and fumble into his hand. “It will prove to me your loyalty, and it might even help drain you of these harsh feelings.”

He passed Anakin his saber, letting it roll off his fingers into Anakin’s hands. Anakin turned the cool silver and black metal over in his palm. It hummed to him, rang to him as something so familiar. He had built it, bonded with this crystal since day one. But this kyber crystal was of light, of something he couldn’t be anymore. 

Slowly, he relaxed into a trance, a few tears slipping down his cheek as he worked through the Force to disassemble his saber, pulling the kyber crystal out and into his hand. The metal parts all fell into the sand in the space between Obi-Wan and himself with a small thud. 

“I’m so sorry,” Anakin whispered out against his palm, crystal tucked safely between his fist. 

“I’ll be right here to help with any adverse reactions. Now, just pour yourself into it. Scream at it the way you wish you could scream at your mother’s murderers.”

“At my slavers. The way they handled me as a child,” Anakin growled, tinges of red poking out between his fingers as the process began.

The Force around Anakin surged to life as he mentally attacked every inch of light in his crystal. Bled every possible good thing from it. He screamed audibly into the arid air everything he had held in his heart for years: the way his Master didn’t seem to trust him, the way Padme didn’t love him back, the way his mother wasn’t saved, and so many horrible things that Obi-Wan would never understand. 

Anakin started floating with the pure energy he had created, the crimson of his Force signature flaring out like a deep forcefield, the edges of it rough and desperate to find something else to dig its claws into. The sand around him came up in waves, as if gravity no longer existed around the man. There was nothing to stop the process now, he was too far into it. 

Small drips of red fell out of his palm, small tears fell down his cheeks, both dripping down and mixing together in the sand. Obi-Wan had done this himself many years ago, remembering the horrifying visions that came with it. The exhaustion. But the eventual relief of having thrown all his anger into one, single thing. The rebirth of knowing his hilt now hummed with the anger he desperately needed to get out. Hummed as a reminder of why he had turned in the first place, and why he would forever stay a Sith. 

Finally, Anakin’s body drifted back to the ground. The process was complete. He slumped his shoulders, before straightening again, reconfiguring his lightsaber back together again with the new red kyber crystal. He brought the hilt into his hand, a death grip on it turning his knuckles white before he opened his eyes. 

They were the most stunning shade of golden Obi-Wan had seen in his entire life. 

Anakin stood, hovering above Obi-Wan, before igniting his saber. The new scream of it, the new deep red, a beautiful sight for the man covered in his enemies' blood. He was a sight to be reckoned with, a man that wouldn’t stand down anymore. 

This was Anakin Skywalker. 

This was the most powerful Sith user around. 

Obi-Wan knew it in his own soul. 

“Master?” Anakin said, staring down at him. Obi-Wan finally rose to stand in front of him, in front of the new man he had found and now signed to the Sith. Already he could feel the way his Force presence had settled, had found a new room within himself to take hostage. 

“Master. Now, my dearest, there’s one more thing I must do,” Obi-Wan smirked, bringing his hand to his own lightsaber at his side. He let it roar to life, the red hue dancing off his saber to connect with the new out at its side. Obi-Wan could almost imagine that in one life, maybe, their crystals knew each other: blades singing together as one voice. 

He placed a hand behind Anakin’s head, sharply pulling at his hair to get Anakin to bare his neck. Anakin let a wide smirk fall across his face, unhinged and living for any moment that came from his new dark energy coursing in his veins. 

Obi-Wan brought his saber up to Anakin’s neck, releasing his hold on his hair to pull Anakin’s Padawan braid taught, slicing it off in one clean movement. He rolled the braid around in his palm before handing it to Anakin to see all his years of Jedi training removed in an instant. I didn’t hurt him anymore. The thought of not going back didn’t even cross his mind, or whatever clarity of mind he might have had behind the dizzying pleasure of being free from the light. The pleasures he could now take, no longer having to shove them down or be ashamed, creeping to the front of his mind as a promise. 

Anakin turned to his mother’s grave, placing the braid next to her headstone which had a crack already running down the middle of it. With one graceful gesture, he put it in the sand as if he had flowers to give her, kissing the headstone once. 

“I’m finally free,” he whispered into it before standing, turning back to Obi-Wan again. 

“It is done. Welcome to the dark side of the Force, Anakin Skywalker. We’re happy to have you.”

Obi-Wan outstretched his hand to Anakin, a finality to the gesture. If he took his hand, the deed would be done, if it wasn’t already obvious that it was finished before. But this would be the moment he signed his own contract. That he truly turned his back on his family in the Jedi Temple and became something new. Something he knew would be more than the Jedi could offer him. Something his grief and regret would fuel for years to come. 

The Force cried for the second time as Anakin took Obi-Wan’s hand, a seal signed between them that one Anakin Skywalker would become a Sith under one Obi-Wan Kenobi. She cried and cried as their Force signatures started their first moment of melding, watching the crimson of Anakin's meld with the deep navy of Obi-Wan's. The first dance of their combined presence.

She wept for the son she had created. The man born from the Force itself finally finding the man who controlled her the best, who knew her from the inside out and made her so much of his presence they were inseparable. 

And she cried for the destruction of the world. The inevitable catastrophe of two men finding each other in the darkness instead of the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm so excited to share this with you all. Come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://xeniaraven.tumblr.com/)


	2. Verse 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! Trigger warning for a slight slight super slight hint at sexual assault in this chapter. You will know from a line of dialogue where it is at in the story. It's about 3/4ths of the way in. 
> 
> Enjoy! And I beg for forgiveness with typos.

It had been seven, long, difficult years since that day Obi-Wan found Anakin on Tatooine. Their Force signatures had melded together so perfectly, so intricately, that it was hard to tell where one man started and the other ended. The Force sang a beautiful violet whenever they were near, but Anakin’s had turned to a dark burgundy when he was alone, and Obi-Wan’s a stiff indigo. No one could truly see it, not even themselves, but the Force knew. She knew what they had become. 

A wicked kind of love had seeped into their hearts. An all-consuming fire where both could be the gasoline, but one would sure extinguish without the other nearby. It was intoxicating, perhaps even beautiful, if they weren't frightening everyone within their reach. 

Much had changed over the years, but one thing always remained: Anakin would forever be bound to Obi-Wan’s side. Sometimes by more than just their Force bond. 

“Emperor Kenobi,” one of his personal guards came through the door to the throne room, followed by a deep bow. “There is someone here to-”

“I don’t need an introduction,” the intruder glared, shoving the guard behind him. But once the newcomer saw the throne room he straightened up, adjusted his color and attitude, before falling into a bow himself. “Emperor Kenobi.”

“Senator Clovis.” Obi-Wan’s voice dripped with petty respect, letting the last of his name stick to the floor like a long drip of honey falling from his tongue. 

The sight of the large, raw-edged obsidian throne was enough to stop all newcomers dead in their thoughts. Each armrest was smooth, except for its sides whose raw edges and sharp points reached downward on in an impressive show of power. The back of it reached toward the vaulted ceilings, far taller than the man currently leaning back against it. The obsidian stretched up, up, up, each point getting slightly taller until it reached the center of the throne. Whether it pointed to a sort of heaven or hell was yet to be determined. 

Obi-Wan was seated nonchalantly, his deep grey and crimson robes just barely standing out against the deep black. He had one leg propped up, arm hanging lazily across his knee, while the other leg spread outward. A greedy pair of hands lay draped over his thigh, fingertips just lightly digging into the muscle in a shower of ownership. Atop his head sat a silver crown, red rubies and golden flecks coming between each upward point of it to look like the blood of enemies spilled, cursed to sit high on his head. 

Anakin watched as Senator Clovis eyed his frame, eyes staring at the silver chains wrapped neatly around his feet, a makeshift set of shoes that lightly clung to his ankles. His legs were bare all the way up to the silver chain waistband that sat high on his hips, sinking low to accent the line of his muscle. The back and front gave way to a crimson chiffon with flecks of silver glitter clinging to it. It was thick enough to feign modesty, but too thin to keep an imagination from running wild. 

His chest was bare except a few small bruises and a thin silver body chain that snaked its way across him in an X to connect to the chain at his waist. The bruises looked intricately placed, dotting up his pectoral and around his shoulder. Jewelry adorned every inch of him imaginable: a silver cuff placed high on his bicep, one single earring of what looked to be a kyber crystal hanging from his left ear, a delicate tiara of the same obsidian as the throne glittering atop his head. The silver of the tiara wrapped itself up the stone like branches, as if anything could actually grow under the Empire's rule. 

“See something you like _senator_?” Obi-Wan’s posh voice rang against the white and gold marble floor. 

“My apologies. I just don’t understand why _he’s_ here dressed like _that_. Many of us today have been questioning it.”

Obi-Wan flicked his golden eyes subtly down to the man leaning against his frame, watching him from his peripherals. Anakin’s barely modest chiffon skirt cascaded down across the steps and Colvis’ eyes watched the edge of it as it was slowly pulled up, finally meeting Anakin’s stare as he realized why it had been moving in the first place. He quickly flicked his eyes away from Anakin’s hands that had the fabric bunched between his fingers, pulling on it. A flutter of laughter fell from the tip of his tongue between his barely parted teeth in mockery. 

“Do you have a problem with what Anakin is wearing?” Obi-Wan tsked. “He so desperately wanted to wear it this morning and you’re going to stand there and insult him?”

“Master.” Anakin breathed out, letting the fabric fall back down. “There’s no harm.”

Anakin shifted back to lay his arms across Obi-Wan’s lap, his gaze still strongly holding Clovis’. He watched the senator’s eyes slowly trace the lines of him, following the chiffon draped over his hips again, tumbling like a wave down the steps before him. Anakin dragged his hands along his master’s thighs, trying to erase the creases that had formed in his suit from a long day of negotiations and formalities. He let his hands travel far enough north to make Clovis turn his head away, uncomfortable from such an intimate action. 

“Is that the only reason you’re here? To stare at my love so blatantly in front of me?” Obi-Wan asked with a warning, brushing a hand through Anakin’s curls. 

“No. I’ve actually come to ask a favor of him,” Clovis smirked, stepping forward. “That is, if you’ll allow it.”

The one thing Clovis had been desperately trying to avoid thinking about was brought blatantly into his line of sight. Obi-Wan was toying with the end of Anakin’s black, leather leash, the end of it clipped to a stunning black collar. The collar was inscribed with something Clovis couldn’t make out, but he knew Sith rune when he saw it. 

Obi-Wan pulled the end of Anakin’s leash between his palm before laying his hand open and hitting his skin lightly with it. Anakin looked absolutely mesmerized with the action. Clovis would have thought he was drooling if he had known better. But then Anakin turned his gaze towards him, looking at how puny he looked in the middle of the throne room, and laughed just slightly. Something passed between them that wasn’t for his ears. 

“What do you say Master?” Anakin teased, his bottom lip pouting out just slightly. “Can I go play? Charity work for the good of the Sith? Help our dear Senator Clovis with whatever catastrophic mess he wants me involved in?”

“He doesn’t _belong_ to you,” Clovis blurted out before realizing his mistake. 

Obi-Wan laughed too, letting it ring out through the throne room, before bringing one leg up to lay over his knee between Anakin's hands. Anakin shifted, laying out directly in front of his master, silver chains glittering in the dim fire and moonlight before them, legs draped over the edge of steps, leaving very little to the imagination. 

It was a duo that sent the galaxy quivering in fear. A shock value of two men so enamored with each other it didn't matter who was in charge, who should be appeased. If one was upset, the other retaliated. And Force forbid someone fuck with Anakin.

“Just because,” Clovis started, testing his boundaries. “Just because you let him lay there, sprawled out for all to see like a whore, chained up to you like a pleasure slave bred to fuck, doesn’t mean he’s not human. He has his own choice you know.”

"I'm not a slave!" Anakin yelled loudly into the room, crawling forward on the floor, ready to attack. His Force presence flared so loudly Obi-Wan tugged lightly on his leash, a warning not to disrupt their negotiations. 

Anakin flicked his gaze back to Obi-Wan, relaxing at the sight of his golden eyes, the hints of deep brown within them. He corrected himself, coming to sit on the armrest of the throne. Obi-Wan snaked his hand behind his back to tug at the chains on his hip, slowly pulling them lower and the rest of his body chain taut. 

“Oh I’m very aware," Obi-Wan said, keeping his gaze on Anakin. "He’s beautiful," he pulled on Anakin's leash until the man's lips were mere inches from his, their breaths intermixing as Anakin let his eyelids flutter closed in contentment. Whatever rage he had before was leaving with every possessive movement and motion from Obi-Wan. "But I didn’t purchase him. In fact, you don’t even know where he came from. Yet so judgemental. Presumptuous. The world is burning out there. War is raging across every part of this galaxy." Obi-Wan straightened up, releasing his tight hold on the leash, a proper emperor's voice filling the room as he stared down at Clovis. "We are _losing_ and you feel the need to ask a favor of Anakin? Do you want him to brandish a saber again and fight alongside your pathetic war? Do you think he wants that?”

“I don’t believe he has any want or will under you, Emperor."

Obi-Wan played with Anakin’s leash, turning it over in his hands. Slowly, he handed the loop end of it to Anakin, his Force presence singing in anticipation of what Senator Clovis would witness. He was falling perfectly into their plans already without him catching on in the slightest. 

Anakin grinned wickedly, standing and taking hold of his own freedom. The silver chains and jewelry rattled as he descended the stairs, an elegant stride of confidence cascading down the marble and across the floor to Senator Clovis. Anakin circled him as the prey he was, watching the repressed shiver that racked his body, the nervous swallow of his throat, how he tucked his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking violently. 

Anakin ran his hands over black silk on the front of the senator's suit, standing behind him. He unbuttoned the first button of it and watched Obi-Wan from over his shoulder. Watched the way his lover’s eyes flowed his every movement, one whisper of mine coming into Anakin’s mind. 

  
“You mistake my submission as ownership senator,” Anakin purred in his ear. “You see, I _choose_ to sit there, like a ‘whore.’ My master knows my power. And I know my place alongside him.”

Anakin circled him again, coming to stand before him. He dragged the index finger of his mechno-hand down Clovis' jawline before hooking it under his chin, pulling Clovis to look into his golden eyes. Clovis instinctively flinched before realizing his mistake, trying to settle into Anakin's touch. 

"It's cold," he offered as an excuse. 

"As it should be," Anakin traced down the side of his other cheek. "You don't deserve to feel the touch of my skin. Of my warm hand. No, you're far too pathetic for that."

Anakin could sense Clovis trying to watch himself, caught in a mousetrap of speaking his own mind or being an astute diplomat. He could feel the small tremors and reflexive moves Clovis’ body did of its own accord at every one of Anakin’s touches. Maybe he hadn’t been touched like this in years. But Anakin knew that was a lie. 

“Why…” Clovis started, picking his words carefully. “Why would you give up your life for- for this? To be below another man?”

“You mistake my position of power Senator Clovis if you believe I am beneath him in anything but our chambers.” 

_Anakin_ , he heard the scold coming from Obi-Wan through their Force bond. A short warning if not with a hint of promise behind it. 

“But how- how did you get here? I know of the mighty Anakin Skywalker. Padawan to Mace Windu. How did you fall so far to become a Sith and a Sith’s pet.” 

“Obi-Wan found me while I was still a Padawan,” Anakin began circling him again, watching as the man whipped his head from one shoulder to the other to keep an eye on him. “A Jedi even. Kneeling in the sand before an entire village of Tuskens, slaughtered. I wanted revenge for my mother’s death, and he offered me a hand. Just something the Jedi would never understand.”

“I do think you’re quite simplifying the story love,” Obi-Wan called out from the throne, enjoying the show.

“I suppose Master. So senator, what is it that you need me for?”

Obi-Wan leaned back against his throne, watching Anakin toy with the prey in front of him. He was an inferno daring to be played with. To Obi-Wan, the world fell at its feet before Anakin, and he loved watching those who thought they were anything more than pawns in his game. Somehow Anakin’s dark side energy came with a healthy dose of sexual energy as well, and Obi-Wan was not complaining. The ability to tease, test, and take from an opponent was something he didn’t have. He knew he was desirable, but not nearly in the way Anakin could make himself be. 

“Negotiations with the Zygerrians,” Clovis looked straight ahead to Obi-Wan, purposely keeping his gaze steady to avoid the abrupt stop of Anakin’s movement. “You know how beautiful _accessories_ sometimes help things go smoother.”

“I’m not an _accessory_ you can drape across your lap senator,” Anakin growled in his ear, quickly wrapping his leash around Clovis’ neck and pulling hard, a wicked grin settling across his face as he listened to the senator gasp for air. “I’m a person, and I decide who gets me and who doesn’t. My loyalties lie with the Emperor. You dare to ask a former slave this kind of question?"

“I- I just thought- your dress- presen-presentation,” Clovis was gasping on his words, unable to get them out.

“The way I dress gives you no right to presume things about me. No right to determine my worth. No right to determine where I go and who I deal with. It’s Emperor Skywalker to you, and I get to-”

“Enough Anakin,” Obi-Wan beckoned, cutting him off mid-phrase. “No need to scare away our guests.”

“Yes, Master.” Anakin reluctantly released him, letting the senator fall to his knees as he grasped at his neck. The outline of the leash was just barely imprinted into his skin. If Anakin was lucky, it might even leave a bruise. 

“Now, senator. I think you understand Anakin has his own freedom with me. His own rights. And I certainly don’t own him.”

Anakin glided across the marble floor, the chains around his feet clinking against the stone, while the moonlight shining into the throne room glittered against the back of his chains. He looked like elegant fury personified and Obi-Wan was positively enamored with him. His gaze fluttered over the sway of Anakin’s hips, up the chain to his neck, his collar, his face. Finally, Anakin came to sit in Obi-Wan’s lap, throwing an arm behind his head while Obi-Wan wrapped his arm around his waist, a death grip on his hip. Eventually, just to make Clovis squirm, he moved his other hand to rest at the junction of Anakin’s thigh and hip, fingertips grazing the side of his cock, the only thing between them a thin piece of Anakin’s skirt. 

“So darling,” Obi-Wan started. “Do we help our dear senator with his slave negotiations?”

“I don’t deal with slavers,” Anakin quipped, playing with the rough fabric of Obi-Wan’s jacket. "And I don't deal with men who feel the need to enslave others with their possessive affections towards them."

"I- What?” Clovis shocked himself out of whatever trance he was in watching Obi-Wan’s hand. “What do you mean I enslave?”

“Well,” Anakin turned his attention back to Obi-Wan, slowly becoming more aware of Obi-Wan’s hand rubbing up and down his thigh slightly. The graze of his fingertips was maddening as he tried to keep his composure. This was important to him. “I was once friends with a certain senator that represents Naboo. A Senator Amidala. As you can imagine, we’re not the best of acquaintances anymore. But she knows I’m more than willing to do what she can’t. And I have heard you’ve been aggravating her and doing quite un-professional things towards and to her.”

“She’s oversimplifying it. She likes-”

“A woman who I’m hardly friends with anymore running into my throne room late at night to beg for me to do something about a man on my court hardly sounds like oversimplifying.”

“So you’re going to believe her over- over me,” Clovis defended, clenching his hands at his side. “I have been loyal to you for years. Thick and thin I’ve been there.”

“What a nice sentiment. But if there’s one thing I don’t tolerate, senator, it’s forced or manipulated attraction.”

“You’re dismissed,” Obi-Wan’s voice boomed out, pulling Anakin into his chest by his hip, rubbing his thumb against the skin to get him to calm. “From our presence and our court.”

“What?!” He yelled, moving towards the throne. “You can’t be serious.”

“When have I ever been one to joke.” Obi-Wan Force pushed him back towards the doors the second Clovis got too close, sending him out for his guards to take care of. 

Anakin smiled at Obi-Wan’s power, feeling it deep within him as he used the Force. It was wonderful to feel Obi-Wan pull on his own power, use it for twice his strength. A shared bond for them to revel in and use however they please, as much as they please.

Obi-Wan slid his hand under Anakin’s other thigh, pulling his leg forward to shift him, have him straddling his lap. 

“Did I do good Obi-Wan? Was I intimidating enough?” Anakin asked, a pout settling onto his face before a wicked grin at feeling Obi-Wan’s hands come to slide underneath the chiffon and grab his ass.

“You were marvelous darling. I love the trick you played with your leash. What a clever boy you are.”

Obi-Wan moved his hands along the line of Anakin’s hips, coming forward to rest on either side of Anakin’s cock, ignoring how it had hardened since he had been sitting in his lap. Anakin’s pupils were blown in the light of the throne room and completely unaware of how hard the obsidian was under his knees. 

“I think you deserve a reward for good behavior.” Obi-Wan nipped at Anakin’s chest, slowly moving his way down to take one of Anakin’s exposed nipples in his mouth, letting it harden before biting down softly. 

“Ah- only, only if- if you too.”

“Such a horrible sentence for someone who was so well-spoken minutes ago,” Obi-Wan laughed into his chest as he worked his way back up Anakin’s chest, grazing his lips ever so slightly over his skin. “If you’d like to treat me, then it’s a celebration of a day of good negotiations.”

Anakin moved his hand over to Obi-Wan’s pants, working his cock free before taking it into his hand. Just as he did Obi-Wan finally moved his hands from where they sat, one coming to take Anakin’s cock in his hand, the other moving to work his balls. 

It was easy between the two of them, the slow roll of Anakin’s hips into Obi-Wan’s hand, the twist of Anakin’s hand with just the right amount of pressure. They had come to know each other on the most intimate of levels. Each movement a combined motion of two that knew how to pull every exasperated moan and sign out of each other. 

Obi-Wan moved one hand away from Anakin, the other still working on pumping him frustratingly slowly, to grip his leash, pulling his face down to eye level. Anakin stayed there for a moment, forehead touching Obi-Wan’s as they mixed their breaths, their moans, their sighs, their signatures, together. Finally, they kissed, both working each other into vocal messes that echoed off the walls of the throne room in an unholy manner, but it sounded like the most heavenly of sounds to them. 

Anakin was heaving into their kiss, not knowing where his Force signature ended and the other started. He could himself slipping away into the bliss that was Obi-Wan’s signature, the space that it held for him there, before pulling back from their kiss, opening his eyes to watch Obi-Wan. He wrapped his mechno-hand around the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, rolling his hips harder into his hand. 

It was winter everywhere but in the space they shared. The space they shared was hot, humid, charged, like a summer heatwave that produced lightning all on it’s own. Emotions of want, need, lust, love, trust, care, passed between them with each passing moment. Every one of Anakin’s moans had Obi-Wan whispering against his skin how glorious he was, how he wanted to hear more, needed to know his mind. But Anakin didn’t have words, didn’t have the proper thoughts to tell him he felt, in these moments, as close to home as he could be. As much himself as he knew possible. 

Finally, Anakin felt himself tipping over the edge, a slow-motion pleasure suddenly cascading from himself, a bliss that couldn't be replicated by anyone other than Obi-Wan. As he felt his orgasm rip through his core, every muscle slowly going slack, he could feel the small pinpricks of his former self, of the light, side reaching out to him in ecstasy. A small, crisp light through the edges of a dark doorway. But just as suddenly as it appeared, he felt the pleasure of his own darkness cut back in, circling itself around him.

He felt Obi-Wan crash through his own orgasm, his Force presence always reaching out to Anakin’s in bliss, to hold through his haze until he could regain himself. He could feel the way their pleasures combined, the deepest pit of unfathomable _yes_ he had ever come to know. It was the way he had always imagined love to feel like: two souls that knew each other inside out, every flaw, every strength. 

But as he came down from his high he always questioned if this was actually love. He had never loved another like this before. How could he be certain this was real?

“Darling, Anakin, come back to me,” he finally heard Obi-Wan’s soft voice, vision refocusing to see the worry on his face. “Where did you go to in that brain of yours?”

“Just too blissed out from that orgasm,” he lied, the hints of a smile trying to force its way on his face. 

“Well,” Obi-Wan kissed over his heart. “I am here to offer many, many more. Whenever you want them.”

“I’ll have to take you up on the offer. But for now, can I go get changed? I kind of, well…” Anakin looked down at the patch of his cum on the inside of his chiffon skirt, and the patch of Obi-Wan’s on the outside. “I think the skirt is ruined.”

They both laughed at the sight, a truly wretched sight in and of itself. Obi-Wan called his black cloak over to his hand from where it hung near the doorway, securing it around Anakin’s shoulders. 

“Of course Anakin. I think I have a few more people today and then I’ll be back to you. I promise.” Obi-Wan grabbed Anakin’s hand as he got up, kissing the back of his knuckles. “I’ll be back to you soon.”


	3. Verse 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will just warn that there is a hint of some battlefield stuff in this chapter where the italics are. It's not graphic at all, but if dead bodies are an extreme no for you, skip from "turning to smoke and fading from his mind." to the end of the italicized section. 
> 
> Besides that I don't believe any warnings are necessary! I might not have even had to warn for that but I try to be very very careful. I hope you enjoy!

Anakin wasn’t a stranger to visions. He had plenty of them as a Padawan, small things here and there, before the horrifying nightmares of his mother. There weren’t many nights before his turn where he had slept soundly. Now, with Obi-Wan at his side, back curled against his chest with Obi-Wan’s hand wrapped around his side and settling just over his heart, he slept soundly. He slept peacefully like he felt he should have been sleeping for years. 

It was an easy routine they had fallen into. This appearance of two powerful Sith that would decimate the world in order to win power, but the inward knowledge that they were still human. At the end of the day, they still wanted the same things any human wanted: physical touch and intimate moments. While simmering with anger, jealousy, and more possessive behavior than should be allowed, there were moments of clarity. 

Recently, after Anakin had let his rage get the best of him and Force choked a man to the brink of death, the nightmares had been flooding back. He couldn’t resign himself to the throne room anymore, couldn’t bring himself to see his anger like that again. Obi-Wan had to stop him. Had to force him out of his own mind and back to the present. So his peaceful nights flitted away into something worse: visions he couldn’t dispel even if he had wished. 

After all… peace is a lie. 

And so these dreams flickered to life every night as his breathing slowed to match Obi-Wan’s, his hand coming to rest on top of Obi-Wan’s, slipping his fingertips over his knuckles into the space between them. Nothing, no matter how much of Obi-Wan he was near, could slip him from these visions.

_A battle raged ahead of him: clones against droids, Jedi against Sith. It seemed the pinnacle of the battle was forging ahead of them from where they stood up on the hill, each battle droid pushing further on the front lines. The weight of it all sat heavily on Anakin’s shoulders. No pride to pull his frame up in a snarky remark. Only the heavy understanding within himself that he knew those men out there, and they were losing the battle._

_But his saber, it felt so right in his hand. He couldn’t remember the last time he held the hilt while his kyber crystal hummed its familiar song to him. Connected itself to his presence as an extension of his arm, his flesh hand back, no mechno-hand to worry about. His kyber crystal sang so smoothly into his Force presence he knew this saber was his life. If he lost it, he lost something of a lifeline in times of trouble, and also something of a deeply personal friend. An extension of who he was as a…_

_Jedi._

_Blue._

_The puzzle pieces of the dream suddenly snapped together. There was no Padawan braid hanging from behind his ear. No clumsy footing. No tiny ponytail. He was a true Jedi Knight, just as he knew he could be. As he was promised to become._

_Seeing himself this way, the blue of his saber filling his eyes as he watched blaster bolts deflect off it, didn’t terrify him. He wasn’t running away from himself at all. Rather, Anakin sunk into the feeling, let the knowledge of being a Jedi find a home, and settle into every space between his bones. The light touching him was a feeling he enjoyed, sighing into how it touched his skin, ligaments, and heart again._

_A presence was behind him: a back pressed firmly against his own in defense. Through the peripherals of his dream, he could see the flick of another blue saber, the way it ensured not a single blaster bolt would hit the two of them. Protecting Anakin at all costs._

_Anakin didn’t have to talk to the man to understand every one of his movements. He could instinctually feel each direction he would go, each movement he would make. There was an unwritten script between them, a movement so natural it had to come from the Force itself. And somehow, without seeing the man behind him, he knew in the fabric of his own life, he wouldn’t let anything harm him._

_Finally, the blaster fire stopped. The battle stopped. Everything shifted away in a cloud of hazy smoke that took the living safely elsewhere and left the fallen across the field. It was harrowing to see, but the dream never let him stay there for long. It tugged his attention back to the man that was once behind him._

_The man faced him now, his snarl from battle turning quickly into a sideways smile as he raked his fingers through his hair, trying to adjust the one small piece that kept falling into his eyes. He let the blue of his saber slide back into the hilt, the indicative sound of it pleasing to his ears._

_He wore Jedi robes. Anakin could have and almost did, cried at the sight each time this dream happened: staring at the sight of something that screamed home. The familiar tunic and belt, the way his tabards sat high on his shoulders. The familiar fabric beneath his fingers, the rough grain of it, and the patches of dirt from battle, all soothing as he reached out to adjust the man’s attire._

_It was different from what Anakin used to wear. While it was the same style, perhaps even identical in creation, the colors were inverted. He dressed in beautiful tans and beiges, a deep brown belt sat on his waist. His under tunic was the same shade of dark brown, almost the same color as Anakin’s outer robes. Similarities passed between their choice in wardrobe that hinted that, in some way, they knew each other as more than just warriors._

_Anakin pressed a quick kiss to the man’s cheek, the scratch of his beard making him smile. He never understood why he did this, what part of him always felt like he had to show physical affection in such a soft way. In acknowledging that directly after a battle this partner was still alive. Still intact. Still breathing._

_Obi-Wan. My Obi-Wan._

_The blue eyes, the color of ice under sunlight, shimmering like a cave of crystal, were always what shocked him the most._

_He knew his face, the red sweep of hair and beard. The freckles dotting across his cheeks. Even his eyelashes and the way they fluttered. But he didn’t know these eyes. They were warm, inviting, and safe, but unfamiliar. Anakin loved every second he stared into them._

_The revelation shocked him to his core._

_Each and every time this dream occurred he'd have to force himself to look away. Tear his eyes away from this other version of the man he loved, this Obi-Wan, Jedi Knight, maybe eve Jedi Master, Obi-Wan._

_He couldn't give himself the opportunity to love what wouldn’t happen._

_So he forced his eyes closed, fluttered his eyelashes downward, and stared at the grass underneath his feet, knowing that just outside of his vision, the man he loved would be turning to smoke and fading from his mind._

_Another shift, a body that hadn't previously been there now sat curiously close to Anakin's foot. He couldn't stop himself from toeing at it, no matter how repulsive it felt to him. He would push at it slightly until he recognized it. Recognized the colors on the braids and the lightsaber attached to his belt. As the body flipped over it became clear:_

_The face looking up at him was his own._

_As the shock settled in he looked out over the battlefield, where droids and clones once lay slain, were now variations of himself. Versions he'd known and versions he'd never seen. One wore a wedding ring. Another still had a Padawan braid but with different colored threads. A third had his mechno-hand. Many had his mechno-hand. A fourth wore deep black and maroon armor with the Republic insignia blazed across his shoulder. A fifth had graying hair just starting above his ears._

_They were all him._

_Each time he felt the guilt, the unfathomable pit grew within his stomach. Without Obi-Wan at his side to cling to, one line voice rang loudly. The voice quieted everything in his mind and the world. It made him deaf to everything but a question. A single pinpoint among everything in the most beautiful songbird voice._

_“Are you happy with your choice?”_

_“Are you happy?”_

Every night Anakin would wake up to the siren sound of the last question ringing in his consciousness. Each syllable rumbled and echoed in the vastness of his mind and slowly disassembled what he thought to be true. A parasite, worming its way into his mind and making his reality seem as if it were a lie: as if he hadn’t been happy at all. It stuck to his skin like sweat-soaked fabric, yet he was never terrified when he woke. He always came into his consciousness pensive, like a man who knew the world was spiraling into an abyss but he wouldn't be able to change it. 

Anakin grabbed his black robe, swinging it gracefully around his shoulders before slipping on a pair of pajama pants for decency. Not that the halls of this place hadn’t seen him in less, but tonight, when he was just Anakin Skywalker and not Emperor Skywalker, he could relax into himself more. 

The cool air outside on their balcony helped him pour over and sift through his thoughts, picking apart each detail of the dream. He knew sinking back into his Jedi training wouldn’t be helpful, dispelling his feelings about the dream into the Force, but he found it soothing. He could keep his rage, his pain, tucked inside himself while still finding clarity in the wonder of the Force. That, and the long stretches of deep meditation, at least let him cast his worries aside and pick up one of the many pieces the dream toppled over each night. 

His eyes drifted shut, content on facing the horizon that would bring a new morning in a few hours, letting himself be immersed in the Force. The feeling of her wrapping around him, the warm embrace and buzz of the cosmic abyss that connected all living things, felt like coming home. Phantom imaginings of his mother’s arms, the smiles of those he passed back on Coruscant, the adoration from Obi-Wan’s eyes when he first whispered _I love you_ , the smell of his favorite food, all flooded his senses in a celebration of his return. 

He wondered what Obi-Wan felt when he meditated. Did he think of Anakin's blue eyes or golden ones? What was his home, his place of coming to in his meditation? They had never meditated together before, Obi-Wan seemingly too afraid to let that much of him show. Anakin just always hoped that he was in Obi-Wan’s pleasant memories as much as Obi-Wan was in his. 

Time passes differently in meditation, sometimes seconds feel like hours, and sometimes hours feel like seconds. Tonight must have been the latter as he felt a new presence step into his own, the sound of faint footsteps just behind it.

"Anakin?" He could hear Obi-Wan's worry and timidness at the end of his name, the sound of it enough to pull him out of his trance. 

Anakin let himself slip from his concentration, slowly coming back to settle on the floor from where he had been floating just an inch or two above it. He let his body sink into the ground beneath him, reassembling himself back in his present consciousness, before turning to smile hazily at Obi-Wan

"Anakin, why are you out here meditating every night? What’s bothering you?” Anakin hadn’t seen him so hesitant before, so worried about saying something wrong. It was new, even in their years of knowing each other, he was always self-assured and confident. Anakin knew he must have startled him somehow, and that alone kept him locked within himself. 

"It's nothing Obi-Wan. I just can't sleep."

Obi-Wan came to sit before him, letting their knees touch slightly, opening his side of their Force bond and hoping Anakin would join. It was rare to see Obi-Wan asking for Anakin to join with him, especially since they were so intertwined already. Even if they tried to close off their bond, something would always seep through. But with Obi-Wan’s Force presence waiting on edge for Anakin, he decided to open up his end. It was water crashing into the shoreline before indigo stopped, unsure of Anakin’s color. Unsure of what this other Force presence was. Anakin’s presence wasn’t crimson, it lacked its dark energy. It was...

Amber.

Since the dreams had started Anakin felt himself shifting, this deep hatred coming out of his presence and seeping into something of longing. Of wishing and hoping and feeling and _craving_ to belong. He wanted to share the same happiness with others that he had with Obi-Wan, the same fits of laughter they gave each other alone in their quarters. But Anakin couldn’t allow himself to be seen as lesser, so he let his rage build within him, let it guide his posture and tone. Yet each night the Force tried to pull him back, rip and shred and detangle his negative energy from his Force signature. Recently, it had been trying to decimate the bond Obi-Wan and Anakin shared. The Force never picks sides, dark or light, but Anakin was special.

Anakin shone like the brightest beacon in the dark night of Obi-Wan, and each dream only shredded him of the darkness, bringing himself into the deep Amber that was his light. But there can be light in the dark. A balancing act of a Sith: controlling the light side of you, choking it down, knowing it’s always there, just never letting it rule you. 

Obi-Wan's presence poked and prodded, looked to see if it still recognized the man before him. And it did, but only once Anakin resigned in a sigh and fully came out of his trance, hands coming to rest on Obi-Wan's. The crimson of his signature started snaking back in, a mist containing his second self muddying the waters of the first.

"Anakin will you please be honest with me?” Obi-Wan huffed in frustration. “I have given you no reason to hide from me.”

"I can't talk to you about this. These dreams they’re… they’re not right."

"Dearest," Obi-Wan moved to caress the side of Anakin's face. He let his thumb trace the bottom point of his scar, regretting how he had let something hurt Anakin. How he had gotten so close to losing him twice now. "Please. You can discuss anything with me. There is nothing in the galaxy that could change my opinion of you."

"But this could. This-" Anakin slumped his shoulders, feeling the weight of everything settle back into him. Whatever peace he had found in his meditation was sinking away, an anchor pulling him to the bottom of the ocean floor. There was no way to escape the dread, and he was positive Obi-Wan would let him drown. "This might be the thing that changes it. Us. You and I."

"Do you no longer love me Anakin?" Obi-Wan asked with just as much softness as he said his name, with the collective care of a breeze underneath butterfly wings. He would never dare to rip the delicate wings that were Anakin’s. But oh, if Anakin were a storm’s breeze, harsh and rough and jagged, he’d let him destroy his own wings in a second, so long as Anakin was happy. 

"No, it's not that. I told you-"

"Anakin, so long as you love me there's nothing you can say to me that could alter my unending adoration of you... Please."

Anakin worried his bottom lip. Truly Obi-Wan hadn't thought of everything. There's no way he meant it? Factually, Obi-Wan had never judged him. Not for that one time with Clovis, not for his tantrums when he first arrived trying to control his dark side, not for the accidental Force lightning. None of it. But this felt more monumental than that. More than he could vocalize. The threat of it pressed against the walls of his esophagus so harshly he was certain it was what made him cry. 

"I know you've been having nightmares again Anakin," Obi-Wan sighed, trying to coax him into explaining. "I feel you leave to come out here every night.”

"I'm sorry I don't mean to wake you. I'll be better at sneaking out. Seriously, it's nothing," Anakin still hung his head low, not wanting to look at how caring Obi-Wan's eyes would be. More importantly, he was afraid he wouldn't like them as much as he liked the dream’s blue. That somehow, the dreams had wrecked his chance to love _this_ Obi-Wan. Of the Obi-Wan he already had.

"Anakin, dearest, even asleep I feel you leave. I've wondered if it's the same for you? This empty coldness. When you leave it creeps in like a draft from a window. I know when you leave because it feels like part of me leaves. I feel your presence in the Force so strongly, like a beacon. It's constantly humming and pulsing in the air and I can feel it relax when I come near. It's… well Anakin I've always wondered if it's the same for you."

In many ways, it was the same. This feeling of part of himself being empty: a forest with a single, solemn clearing where life couldn’t flourish unless Obi-Wan was around. But it terrified him. Attachment was allowed now but how many years had he pushed against it? Had he told himself _compassion only. No attachment._

"No, it's, it's similar. It's very similar. It's just- Obi-Wan these dreams they're, they're not really nightmares. I'm not afraid of them?"

"You like these dreams then? They're comforting?" Obi-Wan inquired, moving his hands from Anakin and grabbing the junction where Anakin's legs crossed before him. "If you like them then why get up? Why leave…"

"They're nightmares towards the end," Anakin offered, seeing how it hurt Obi-Wan. "I see myself, bodies that would have been me and could have been me and _should_ have been me if-if I would've stayed."

"If you were a Jedi?"

"Yes," Anakin sighed out, the aftertaste of the answer stinging in his throat. The shame of it crushing his shoulders, holding off a flood of regret and wonder at what he would have been like if he would have listened, if he would have found his mother sooner, if he would have…

If.. 

“I cannot speak to how you would have been had you stayed a Jedi,” Obi-Wan tried to pull Anakin out of his inward spiral. He could feel Anakin’s presence sinking into himself like a vortex, the pain of it growing within him and threatening to burst from his throat in a scream. “But I’d like to know more about your dream. If you’ll share.”

Obi-Wan lifted his hand to rest gently under Anakin’s chin, pulling his face up to look at Obi-Wan, to watch the soft, gentle smile that he wore upon his face. He nuzzled into the soft palm of Obi-Wan’s hand, settled into the encouragement and comfort Obi-Wan sent into their bond. A warm blanket of _us_ settled between them as if a key had unlocked Anakin’s confidence to speak the truth about it all. 

Anakin resolved to know he’d never get the words out right, so instead, he opened his mind up to Obi-Wan, letting the images of his dream flutter into this vision. He kept his feelings away from the dream, just let the factual images drift into the infinity between them, seeping each individual color and figure from his mind, through the tips of Obi-Wan’s fingers on his cheek, into the other man’s mind, and reshaping it together. 

It felt like an arduously slow process, taking the galaxy of Anakin’s own dream from his brain and trying, desperately trying, to recreate it in Obi-Wan’s brain. He could feel his love’s reaction to each thing. The way he had to see himself as a Jedi. The curiosity at the sight. The way his temper flared and his heart ached at the sight of all the variations of Anakin. 

Finally, the dream ended, Anakin watching Obi-Wan’s face as he finally returned to himself, life slowly flooding back. The blush of his cheeks and the slight fluttering of his eyes as his presence separated from Anakin’s to push back into his body. Obi-Wan blinked slowly a few times as if getting used to the morning sunlight right when waking up, before dropping his hand down from Anakin’s face and grabbing Anakin’s palm. He brought his hand up to his mouth, kissing along his knuckles as a tear slipped down his cheek. He was holding onto Anakin painfully, grasping at his hand so firmly it was as if he thought Anakin would disappear. 

“Obi-Wan?” It was Anakin’s turn now to be worried, to whisper his name like a plea that he wasn’t upset, wasn’t angry at him. “Master?”

Obi-Wan finally dropped Anakin’s hand, shifting to sit on his knees and pressing a long kiss into Anakin’s forehead, dipping fainter, smaller kisses down the line of his nose before pulling Anakin to him, pressing their foreheads together. 

“I’m so sorry dearest,” he whispered like a prayer to an unknown presence between them. “I’m so sorry. I understand now. Not nightmares, but not dreams. You have killed before, a warrior in your own ways. But that… Anakin you have not killed your soul. You have not thrown your future away by choosing the dark side.”

Anakin just nodded, thankful Obi-Wan wasn’t upset with him, wasn’t angry at this vision he was having. He sent a wash of relief between them as Obi-Wan came to sit cross-legged again.

"Do you wish to leave? To leave the Empire? The Sith?" Obi-Wan paused, almost, almost unable to say the last question. “Me?” 

For the first time in a long time, Anakin had to think hard. He had to really pull himself into his own heart and wonder _was I happy with my decision? Was I happy with the chaos I've brought? Was I happy with the lives I've stolen?_

_Was I happy here?_

They were questions that popped up rough and ragged in his brain but pushed away, never answered. Anakin knew he was unhappy at the show he had to put on some days. The political buttons he had to press with Obi-Wan. He never wanted to rule, and Obi-Wan never wanted to burden him. But Anakin was reckless, always doing before thinking, and now his happiness with Obi-Wan would forever be overshadowed by his requirement to rule. 

Obi-Wan saw his internal questioning, the furrow of his brow and concentrated gaze told him all he needed to know before speaking. "Anakin. Dearest. My heart. You are not captive here. Not since Sidious. Not since you outranked me. If you wish to go, to leave this, and find whatever it is you're looking for, I will not stop you. In fact, I encourage you. Seek out your happiness. Your happiness will _always_ be the most important thing to me."

His eyes widened at the suggestion, at the ability to truly leave, to break the Sith Code, to give up power and just _be_. Exist in the galaxy with a saber and his own mind. What a dangerous thought, and yet what a magnificent proposition. 

But then it crept back in, this inability to leave Obi-Wan. He couldn't do it. This man was, well, was as important to him as his own life. There was no world he could imagine where he wasn't there. And maybe it wasn't a Jedi thing, and maybe it wasn't a Sith thing, but it was an Anakin and Obi-Wan thing. He couldn't leave him. 

"I can’t," Anakin finally spoke, putting his hands on top of Obi-Wan’s, brushing his fingers lightly between the divots of his knuckles.. "I can’t… I won’t leave you."

"I can't either," Obi-Wan smiled, a sigh of relief washing over him. "But you're never bound to me."

"What if I wanted to be? What if, what if it was just you and me? No Code, no, no anything. Just _us._ "

"Like a life vow? I swear to protect you and only you and you swear the same in reverse?"

Obi-Wan and Anakin intertwined their fingers, simmering the suggestion between their bond, twirling it in their minds together. The idea of it was intoxicating: two darksiders that only cared for each other. It was lawless, ruthless, cold. But maybe...

“Do you really think it could work?” Anakin asked, staring up at Obi-Wan, hoping the answer was yes.

“Sith are entirely selfish. It wouldn't be abnormal except for the fact that we share a bond. Most Sith, well, they’re not keen on having to watch another’s back,” Obi-Wan snickered just slightly, remembering all the times he saw Sith partnered up. “Besides, we rule. Technically you rule. But we are Emperors over all. We can decide and change whatever we’d like. No Code. Just you. Me. And Force to the rest of it.”

Obi-Wan’s voice was velvet. A sultry slide of s sounds dripping off his tongue and pooling into Anakin with a warm heat of pleasure, the kind of pleasure one _takes_. A devilish grin came back across his face, his darkness starting to spread from within him again, affirming that he had made the right choice. The darkness within him would guide him. The light would just be an addition to him: something to balance out the thick underbrush of his crimson anger. 

“So you’re mine?” Anakin started, his force signature slowly intermixing with Obi-Wan’s again, deeper and deeper. It felt like home this time. Whatever had muddied their signatures was gone and it was nothing but the two of them mixing into the deepest shade of violet.

“Yours.”

“Mine.” Anakin said with finality. 

Obi-Wan moved to sit up on his knees again, leaning his body over Anakin as if he were prey, begging to be caught. 

“And you’re mine?” Obi-Wan started, his body pushing closer over top of Anakin’s, forcing Anakin to lay back against the ground. 

“Yours,” he watched as Obi-Wan moved to straddle him, moving entirely over Anakin’s frame. He pushed Anakin’s arms above his head, their fingers staying interlaced the entire time as if breaking them would break their vow. 

Obi-Wan hovered just over Anakin’s mouth, their breaths mixing. His pupils were already dilated, a sliver of black amongst a deep yellow, as if his eyes were a binary solar eclipse by themselves. He moved down to graze his mouth against Anakin’s lips before sucking Anakin’s lower lip between his teeth, biting lightly and pulling back. 

“Mine,” he growled.

They spent the night proving it, interweaving themselves in every way possible. Pushing and pulling each other in their bonds until there was no one over the other. Until they looked like one flesh: one union together in two bodies. Two bodies that craved, enjoyed, ruined each other over and over again until the sunlight grazed their bare skin and affirmed everything. It was Anakin and Obi-Wan against a world of Sith, Jedi, and even themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't catch on after the skip, basically all the fallen soldiers from the battlefield turned into versions of Anakin's life if he would have chosen a different path. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always feel free to come say hello on [ tumblr ](https://xeniaraven.tumblr.com). I also love reading all of your interpretations in the comments so thank you to all of you that commented on the last two chapters! Also this wasn't beta'd because we have nightmares like real men and continue those nightmares over typos later.


	4. Chorus 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've finally made it to the chorus. Thank you for sticking around for the chapter I have been dying to write. Enjoy.
> 
> This chapter has knifeplay and choking in it. I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. So, if that's bothersome to you, the only actual relevant plot that you'll need to know for future chapters is with Ventress at the beginning. So if you read until she leaves, you're good!

“Ventress,” Obi-Wan let the _s_ slither across the floor to where she stood on the marble. “What a lovely surprise.”

“I’m not here for you Kenobi. Where’s the pretty boy?” Ventress had a sway to her walk, the kind she used when she wanted something and she was prepared to do anything to get it.

“We both rule, so, therefore, you can take your request up with me,” Obi-Wan snapped through gritted teeth, sitting straight up in his throne. 

“Oh how comical. No, you know you're just Anakin’s little plaything. It’s such a marvelous game you two have. Senators think you’re special but us Sith, we all know, whoever has the previous Emperor’s kyber crystal is ruler. And of course, the evidence that the previous ruler is dead. So I’d guard his pretty little saber if I was you,” Ventress smirked, slowly making her way towards the throne."

Obi-Wan couldn’t stop her. The Sith knew the truth, they knew he had no power. Just a puppet for Anakin and a way to keep senators in line. In reality, Anakin had final say on everything, and while senators didn’t care, Sith always did. They all knew to take their requests to the source, never rely on middle-men to do the job right. 

“His saber is locked where you can’t find it love. I dare say it would take you a lifetime to uncover.”

“Is that so? Well, I guess I better start looking now.”

Ventress finally made her way to the front of the stairs, taking each step slowly as she kept eye contact with Obi-Wan. Her sabers were, thankfully, missing from her side, a no-weapons law that Obi-Wan became more thankful for with every passing year. Finally, when she reached the throne she placed one thin, sly hand on the armrest, just next to Obi-Wan’s arm, and leaned forward into his personal space. 

“If you’re here for Ankain,” Obi-Wan started. “Why do you seem so enamored to be this close to me?”

“Oh just something about those freckles,” she placed a hand under Obi-Wan’s chin, tilting his head side to side. “And this beard. What a man.”

“What do you want from Emperor Skywalker,” Obi-Wan tested his waters, seeing where she would give and take. He wanted her to speak directly to him, not have Anakin interfere in the middle of muddy waters with a person he already despised…

“A favor. As do us all who come to your court, handsome."

"And what would that favor be? You should surely know that he and I are on more than just a talking basis-"

"The entire court knows. The entire Empire! You and him, well, let's say you don't keep him very quiet some days," Ventress smirked, coming to seat herself on the armrest of the throne. 

"Then you should also be aware that your request will make its way to him," he smiled, leaning away from her but making sure to keep eye contact. 

"Oh, I'm sure you always make your way back to him. His bed more like it."

Ventress leaned down to Obi-Wan, her small frame intimidating and vicious as it towered over him. She had just as much alluring dark side energy as Anakin, but Obi-Wan would never be interested. 

Of course, when Anakin threw open the throne room doors, he wouldn't have known the difference. 

"Ventress," he barked, a low, deathly growl deep in his throat. He was practically animalistic, jaw clenched and teeth bared towards the woman on the throne.

He snarled like a demon but dressed like a god. A sheer black cape draped softly over his shoulders, silver chains connecting the shoulders and draping across his chest. He wore a high neck shirt, lace and sheer, that dripped down his back impeccably low. For once he finally wore pants, a tailored, cropped pair, accented by a silver chain sitting high on his waist and a leather thigh harness clamped against his left leg.

What a vicious sight to see him this way. 

"Emperor Skywalker," she smiled, putting her leg up to slink across Obi-Wan and onto the armrest across from her. "I was just telling your lovely playtoy here that I was looking for you."

Anakin reached a hand out, storming toward the stairs, letting the Force wrap around Ventress' throat. He dragged her down from her perch until she was kneeling before him on the top of the steps. 

"How _dare_ you sit on my throne," Anakin snapped in her face. "You think you have any rights to my position?"

"Oh, Anakin. How much I love you more and more as a Sith.”

Anakin quickly pulled out a knife from where it was sheathed in his thigh harness, the lapis lazuli of the hilt a shocking color against the black edge of the blade. He used the Force to keep Ventress' head in place, immobilizing her, as he crouched and pushed the cool metal against the flesh of her neck. 

"You're about to love me more and more in death. What are you here for?"

"I need a favor oh _gracious_ and _kind_ Emperor."

Obi-Wan felt Anakin's temper flare, Ventress pushing too many buttons. He was a forest fire, and Ventress the dry underbrush that fueled his destruction. He couldn't let this get out of hand, Obi-Wan knowing what would happen if Anakin actually did kill someone. 

_Anakin. Don't._ he pushed through their bond into his mind. 

Not only did he snap up at Obi-Wan, but his Force signature did too. More and more he looked like a wolf, teeth bare and hackles raised, wide stance. The man before him, somehow, must have felt she was here before even storming in. 

"Get out," he spoke to her through gritted teeth.

"Or what? You'll kill me? My dear Anakin, killing with a knife like a low life. What happened to the great Sith knight? The red saber that slashed through our battles, hmm? Don't tell me you've just become Kenobi's-"

"I said _out_." He looked down at her, golden eyes ablaze and knife pressed deep against her skin. A moment passed, a beat of seeing what would happen, before Ventress moved from under Anakin's gaze. 

"I'd still like a meeting with you," she called as she walked out the throne room. "I think it would be beneficial to us both."

The throne room's doors closed roughly, an echo bouncing across the marble and obsidian, the breeze threatening to blow out the nearest candles. Anakin stormed up the steps, crawling over Obi-Wan, one foot up on the armrest of the throne and the other gracefully between his knees. He threatened the blade centimeters from his neck, crouched, yet over his frame like a towering inferno with no water in sight. 

"Flirting with another visitor? You dare decide I'm not worthy of your time? After everything I've given you," Anakin snarled, nostrils wide and temper seeping from him into the cool obsidian beneath each pinpoint of his touch, threatening to melt and crack it. "You're mine and I'm yours. I thought we agreed on this long ago _muni_.”

Anakin let the Huttese roll languidly off his tongue, smiling at the sneer on Obi-Wan’s face at the term. His grip on the handle of his blade was vicious. There was only one thing in this galaxy that was more alluring than Anakin in his collar, and that was Anakin with a temper. His anger could dim the brightest stars; a supernova's furry had nothing in comparison to Anakin's bared teeth and heaving chest. 

“It’s called political negotiations _Anakin_ ,” Obi-Wan snarled. “Though I’m sure you don’t know much about that.”

“Political negotiations?” Anakin huffed, swaying back just slightly before coming in closer. “Consider this aggressive negotiations then.”

Obi-Wan leaned forward, gripping bruises into Anakin's thighs as he brought his own neck to the edge of the blade, negating the distance that Anakin had between skin and metal. He held the gravitational pull of Anakin's eyes, not knowing if they'd crash together in a furry or shove apart in disgust. 

"You want me dead? Do it," Obi-Wan cocked his head to the side with a smirk. "I know you wouldn't dare hurt your Master. You'd have to replace me, find a new neck to throw in front of the senators during the day and bite into to muffle your moans at night."

Obi-Wan pushed himself forward until the blade cut into his skin, a small rivulet of blood trailing down his neck. He watched as Anakin's eyes traced it sliding down his skin. Enjoyed the way one singular drop of blood left a tiny red line down the delicate muscle of his neck, skitting aside the collar of his shirt and pooling into the shallow line of his collarbone. Obi-Wan's eyes were filled with a dare, a question so unusual for Anakin he wondered what he had actually gotten himself into. He was all rage and rough edges but Obi-Wan was a proper Sith, one that waited for his prey to make the wrong move.

So Anakin went to lick the blood from his skin, only to have Obi-Wan's leg that was swung so casually over the armrest come to wrap around the back of Anakin's thigh, one hand pushing him back against the obsidian. As he fell Obi-Wan game to grab Anakin's flesh hand with the knife in it. He pushed Anakin over, the curve of his back placing him over the edge of the sharp armrest to look up his own torso at Obi-Wan hovering over him, overpowering him. He heard the rip of his cape, chains coming to dangle over the side of his shoulder as he was forced into the position. Anakin's own hand with the knife came down to his navel both from the strength of Obi-Wan and the aid of the Force. 

"Darling, you should always know never to play with me like this," Obi-Wan cooed. He pushed the dull edge of the blade slowly up Anakin's torso, letting it sink into the delicate lace of his shirt without nicking any of his bronzed chest. "I will always win."

"Maybe I'll never play again," Anakin struggled, trying to get back up, gain his power back. But it was futile, two black holes of dark energy and lust fighting against each other. One will always overpower the other. One will consume the other whole, spinning the remnants of their galaxy off into the empty void of space, keeping it's core at their center. A catastrophic, cataclysmic battle of death and rebirth, where one will always contain the other.

"Now darling, baby boy, why would you ever want to stop playing with me?" Obi-Wan purred as he leaned over Anakin's extended torso, twisting his hand enough to get Anakin to relinquish his hold on the blade. "You love this, especially if your cock has anything to say about it."

Slowly Obi-Wan rotated the blade on the hollow of Anakin's neck at the top of his shirt's neckline until the sharp edge danced across the lace. He pulled the bottom of Anakin's shirt taut with his other hand and ripped down it with the knife, letting it flutter open across his chest. 

As Anakin stared down at his shirt, Obi-Wan reached behind his head, grabbing a fistful of his curls and pulling harshly, tugging Anakin back up. He knelt on the seat of his throne, knees digging harshly into the stone, while dragging Anakin's legs around his thigh, shoving it hard into Anakin's erection. Anakin tried his best to stifle a moan in his throat, biting his lip and staring daggers into Obi-Wan as he loomed over him, a few inches taller than man even while kneeing. 

"You forget my Master, I am the one granting you power. You'd be nothing if I hadn't killed Darth Sidious. The right to this Empire falls to me, the champion. Have you already forgotten so easily how you failed?"

"And yet you still call me Master. Still beg for me at every moment of the day. Gain pleasure from my mouth, hands, words, breath. You cannot sleep without me at your side. You cannot breathe when my force presence is hidden from you. It's all a game of give and takes dearest. Don't forget how much I _give_."

Obi-Wan roughly undid the clasp of Anakin's pants and zipper, pulling him out to gaze at. He flipped the knife around, blade in his hand, and dragged the hilt of it up his cock, making it twitch at the coolness of the gemstone handle. 

"I give and give until you're a whiny mess." He smiled as Anakin bit back a small whine at his word and the feeling of harsh stone against his most delicate skin. "Maybe for once I'll _take_."

Anakin’s eyes went wide as Obi-Wan quickly moved to cut the shoulders of his cape off, the chains sliding down Anakin's exposed back racking a cold shudder from him. He pulled the rest of his ruined shirt off himself, leaning back delicately from Obi-Wan. 

"Knees," he said with darkness just behind his smile. Never in all of their years together had Anakin seen him like this. He'd be lying if he said it didn't invoke something deep within him to see Obi-Wan sink so far into this feral energy and let it lose. "And darling, take those vile chains and pants off."

He did as he was told, sliding off Obi-Wan's leg and quickly, or as quickly as possible with so many accessories, stripped himself bare. Kneeling on the cold marble his eyes went wide as Obi-Wan stood, circling him once, twice, three times. Finally, he stood before Anakin, placing the tip of the knife under his chin to tilt his head up to Obi-Wan.

The halo of the silver crown atop his head was a false image: a demon wearing angel markings. His golden eyes were an instant tell from Obi-Wan's hard facade: this entire ordeal was a twisted fantasy that Anakin would finally allow him to have.

Anakin sent a wave of arousal, hard and strong, through their Force bond as Obi-Wan worked himself free from his own pants.

"Open," was the only command as Obi-Wan smeared the head of his cock against Anakin's closed lips until they parted, letting him in. “Good little _Emperor_.”

He pushed in harshly, not caring much that Anakin gagged around him as he thrust in. Anakin stared up at him through lidded eyes, pathetic little whimpers coming from his mouth and the obscene sound of Obi-Wan hitting the back of his throat over and over again. Anakin braced his hands on Obi-Wan’s things as a hand came around the back of his head. Obi-Wan pushed all the way in until Anakin’s nose hit the curls at his base and the zipper of his pants dragged against his chin. He was held there as Obi-Wan thrust in shallowly for a few seconds before pulling Anakin off roughly by his hair. 

“So debauched,” Obi-Wan stared down at him, pulling Anakin’s hair tighter to give way to his beautiful neckline. He tucked the knife in his shirt pocket before coming down to wipe the spit off Anakin’s lips, pushing his thumb into his mouth. Anakin sucked around Obi-Wan’s thumb lightly before he pulled it out, cleaning against Anakin’s cheek. “No words now? Nothing to say? Oh but you’ve always been such a talkative one.”

Anakin started to stand before Obi-Wan pushed him back down with the Force, pinning his legs to the marble. It was nice, being bossed around by Obi-Wan who, at least when alone, would never. He didn’t have to beg. Didn’t have to plead. He just had to sit there and take it, so why would he speak and ruin it. Obi-Wan was _his_ and he wanted to see him prove it, letting the thought be known between their bond.

Obi-Wan stroked himself as he stared down at Anakin whose gaze kept fluttering back and forth between staring at his cock and staring up at his face. That man was _his_. How dare he believe he’d go off with someone else when he could have this pretty face, these long eyelashes, these puffy red lips, whenever he wanted. 

“Master,” Anakin finally whimpered out, opening his mouth and sticking his tongue out. 

“Do you want it? Want to suck me off until I come in that pretty mouth of yours dear one?” Obi-Wan pushed his index finger onto Anakin’s tongue, forcing his mouth open wider as a line of spit fell. Anakin tried nodding as best as possible before finally pushing _Let me taste you_ through their Force bond. 

Once Obi-Wan pulled his finger back, wiping it against Anakin’s face again, he let Anakin have him. Anakin wrapped his hand around the base before adding his mouth, pulling and twisting his hand and taking as much of it as he could. He knew all the tricks, all the little places Obi-Wan liked. It came with years of practice and a carnal desire to hear him moan. 

“Mmm, good job dearest. Such a good little Sith,” Obi-Wan praised as Anakin continued. 

Their inferno danced between them, a flicker of one flame inciting another to attack. A gradual grow and simmer of reds and oranges under a dark navy night that pleaded with pleasure to continue. Each crackle of fire spit up into the sky as something to chase, to pull back down and let the fire build, build-

“I’m so close Anakin. Such a good, fuckable mouth. So talented. Mmm, what a lithe little tongue you have.

Obi-Wan reached down to tug on Anakin’s hair again, keeping him steady as he fucked back into his mouth. It didn’t matter that spit was leaking out the sides of Anakin’s mouth, or that he was tugging perhaps a bit too hard on his golden curls. He felt his own pleasure building, Anakin feeling the feedback of it in their bond, before he pulled out halfway and spilled onto Anakin’s tongue. 

“Don’t you dare-” Obi-Wan stared down at him as he pulled out of his mouth. “Open.” Seeing his own come in his lover's mouth was perfectly erotic in the most toxic kind of way. It slowly slipped down Anakin’s tongue, threatening to spill out, before Obi-Wan spoke again. “Swallow. Good Anakin. Good _Emperor.”_

Obi-Wan pulled Anakin up to stand, watching his eyes glaze over with lust, continuing to stay locked on his. He let little images slip between their Force bond of Anakin bent over the side of their throne as he fucked him merciless, and it was enough to have Anakin’s eyes roll back in his head from want. 

“Obi-Wan _please_ ,” he whined out as he waited for Obi-Wan to speak. When he let his eyes roll back forward, focusing on the scene in front of him, he felt the coolness of the blade again against his collarbone. It jutted out harshly, very little muscle between bone and skin, easy enough to nick a small cut in to. 

“I could mark you,” Obi-Wan smiled as he kissed the small cut he made. “Would you like that Anakin? I could carve my initials into your hip bones for you to feel every day. And if anyone tried to touch you, to fuck you, they’d have to see O. K. written across your pretty gold skin.”

The knife trailed down the center of Anakin’s chest, following the line of his abs as Obi-Wan sunk down before him to his knees. One quick flick of his tongue against the head of Anakin’s cock had Anakin cry out. “No no no, please. Please- Obi-Wan I want your mouth.”

“Not yet darling. I’m not done _taking_ ,” he smirked, pulling the blade to the lowest part of Anakin’s hips, right where they met his thighs. “What do you say? Want me to make a pretty little mark? I could do an O here,” he kissed the exact point along his hipline he intended, “and a pretty little K here.” He kissed his other hip softly before starting up Anakin’s torso to meet the other man’s eyes. 

Anakin nodded quickly, involuntarily jerking his hips when Obi-Wan kissed the side of his cock. Pain was pleasure, and this was something he’d wanted to try. The feeling of bruises, of small burns or cuts, on him during sex was wonderful. They were never intentional, not like this. Just things from Anakin being clumsy, or from when he was still allowed out on the battlefield. 

This was new, fun, and entirely needed.

Obi-Wan didn’t let himself drag too deep, just the tiniest little three lines of an O in Sith rune on the inside of Anakin’s hips. Anakin let his head fall back at it, especially once Obi-Wan came to kiss it softly. He repeated the same on Anakin’s other hip, a small K in Sith rune, and one little kiss to seal it against his skin. 

“Look at that,” Obi-Wan purred. “My precious Anakin all marked up as mine. Come in his mouth. Initials on his hips. The only thing left is my come in his ass.”

Anakin keened at it, begging through their bond _Master, please. I-_ before he was cut off with a stern, “Speak Anakin. I want to hear you say it. Out loud.”

“I wanna be stretched and fucked and- and fucked again until you have everything. Just- ah!”

Obi-Wan wrapped his lips around Anakin’s cock, sucking ever so lightly as he bobbed his head a few times just to hear Anakin cry out. To hear the high pitched squeal and moan, and to watch him try desperately not to touch Obi-Wan. Clenching his fists at his side before he lost his own control, wrapping a hand up his chest to play with his nipples, pulling and kneading them between his fingers. 

With a pop Obi-Wan pulled off of him, coming to stand in front of Anakin again and wipe the hair out of his face, delicately tucking a strand of it behind his ear. 

“Now I’m ready to _give_ ,” he whispered into Anakin’s ear, sucking his earlobe between his teeth and biting on it softly. He continued trailing down his neck, sucking bruises with every kiss as Anakin wrapped his arms around his neck, trying to pull him close. He wanted to devour Obi-Wan whole. A binary star system with Anakin going red giant, absorbing all of Obi-Wan into each and every crevice of himself until only one star was left from two.

Hard, rough, teeth clanking against each, other Obi-Wan pulled Anakin into a kiss, letting the knife clamor onto the ground next to them. Anakin tasted like black caf and a sweet pastry, like early morning breakfast and summertime air. 

With one swift movement, Obi-Wan pulled Anakin up, carrying him back to their throne as his nails dug into Anakin’s thighs. Carefully, he set Anakin down on the throne, the black obsidian of it all a rare sight for him to be sitting in alone.

“I think a ruler needs to sit in his throne, don’t you?” Obi-Wan smirked. “You do look like a god against all that black. The galaxy quakes at your feet.”

“Yet you still stand,” Anakin eyed him, playing along with whatever story Obi-Wan wanted to paint. “Clothed at that. I think court rules are that no one is to outdress the Emperor.”

“Of course. I’d be improper if I outdressed my most esteemed Skywalker.”

Anakin watched him undress. He shrugged his shoulders out of the black coat he wore, the golden embroidery shimmering against the candlelight as it sunk to his feet. Each button was undone arduously slow, or perhaps Anakin was just too impatient, before his chest was bare. Then the part Anakin was waiting for, the slip of his shoes off and pants to follow until Obi-Wan was naked. He raked his eyes up and down the man, from his strong calves and thighs, to his flushed cock, already half-hard again, the harsh lines of his abs, broad shoulders, neck, beard, cheeks dotted with freckles, and golden eyes staring straight back at him. 

“I think you’re finally fit for my court,” Anakin held his chin high as he tried his best ruling voice. “What is your request?”

“To fuck you senseless,” Obi-Wan made his way over to the throne, each step accentuating his words. “To throw you over this abyss of black, stretch you out on my fingers until you’re begging, pleading, needing me to shove my cock so deep in you, you see stars. And even then, as you’re crying out with pleasure, fuck you harder. To force the image of how I fill you, devour you, _please_ you into every part of your consciousness. Until you couldn’t imagine another in you. And to prove to you, my dear Emperor Skywalker, that I’d never fuck another the way I fuck you.”

In one swift movement, Obi-Wan pulled Anakin’s legs forward until he was on the edge of the throne. Anakin twisted himself around, chest laying flat against it. His nipples were hard and rubbed sorely against the unforgiving stone, but it was worth it for the feeling of Obi-Wan kneeling behind him and leaning over his body until his breath was on his ear. 

“Is my request granted, _your highness_.”

“Yes,” Anakin breathed out as Obi-Wan dug his nails into Anakin’s shoulder, leaving tiny red crescent marks in their wake. “Your request is granted.”

Obi-Wan pushed two fingers into Anakin’s mouth, letting him wrap his tongue around them and get them nice and slick. Pulling out of his mouth he reached his hand back, one finger playing and toying with Anakin’s entrance as he rocked back against him, breathing hard against the throne. 

He pressed one soft, delicate kiss to the marks on Anakin’s shoulder as he pushed a finger in, listening to Anakin cry out into the room. The man was never quiet, and why should he be? Let them hear him. Let them know he was taking what was rightfully his and no one else’s. 

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin breathed out, pushing his legs farther apart to try and get Obi-Wan to sink further inside of him. “More. More. I can take it.”

“Already whining and I only have one finger in you. Am I not enough? I can leave you here a panting mess-” Anakin clenched, his point heard even if he didn’t say anything. “Oh, so it’s enough. You should be _grateful_ for my giving dearest.”

He brushed his finger against Anakin’s prostate just for emphasis, watching as Anakin’s head rolled back and he cried out _yes, yes, Obi-Wan_ into the air. As Obi-Wan added another finger he just begged and cried out more, letting his forehead drop back onto the cold stone. He couldn’t find purchase to grab at, instead of putting one hand flat against the back of the throne and curling his fingers against it. 

“You’re so pretty on _my_ throne Anakin. I’ll have senators, Sith, guests of all kinds come through here and never know how I had you writhing against this place of honor. They’ll come to stand before me not knowing your come leaked down on the marble where their shoes lie. I’ll know though-” he pushed a third finger in as Anakin rocked back against him harder. “I’ll know how I had you begging for my cock, worshiping my fingers. I’ll imagine it every day.”

Anakin balled his hand into a fist, slamming it down onto the throne as he cried with pleasure, the stretch painful and so, so wonderful. It slowly turned into the best kind of pleasure, his entire body dissolving to the point of three fingers pushing in and out of him, brushing against the nerves that had his vision whiting out with bliss. 

As they worked to get themselves together physically, their Force signatures were already mixing and dancing with each other. Each flare of pleasure jolted between them like a bolt of lightning, the residual thunder of it rolling between them and slipping out of their mouths in a groan. 

Obi-Wan kissed the soft, sweat sheened curve of Anakin’s ass before biting into it, earning a small yelp from Anakin. He relaxed down again after clenching hard against Obi-Wan’s fingers. Oh, how it made Obi-Wan’s mind swim with ideas of how badly he wanted that exact feeling, the tightness of it, clenched around his cock. It had him pulling his fingers out quickly and slapping Anakin’s ass hard. 

“Up. Over the armrest,” He ushered, coming to stand and help Anakin up. He was wobbly at first, knees red and throbbing from the marble, before he positioned himself over the armrest, chest coming to lay down the length of it. “Good boy.”

Obi-Wan lined himself up with Anakin, pushing in with one long thrust, both men moaning out into the nothingness before them. He dug his hands into Anakin’s hips, fingers brushing against the new O and K there as Anakin whined, bringing his hands down to Obi-Wan’s and pushing against them harder. Wanting to feel the slight burn of the cuts along his skin.

Anakin brought his hands back up to the side of the armrest to brace himself as Obi-Wan pushed into him hard, the slap of skin ringing into the room. A small _Anakin_ escaped his mouth as he thrust in and out. It was almost close enough, almost exactly what Obi-Wan had imagined in his mind. 

They’d never actually had sex on the throne. A handjob or blowjob here and there, but never had Anakin laid himself out against it and let himself be fucked. Obi-Wan never thought to ask, but now, now he would crave it every day of his life. 

“Harder, Obi-Wan, ah! Harder,” Anakin reached behind him in a desperate attempt to catch Obi-Wan’s side and pull him in more. Instead, Obi-Wan towered over him and grabbed his hair, yanking it back to get Anakin to arch just a tiny bit to get the right angle. He knew he found it when Anakin choked on his own moan, _Master_ caught in his throat, waiting for Obi-Wan to fuck it out of him. 

Anakin seemed to love being marked, something Obi-Wan didn’t realize ran as deep as he was finding out now. He towered over Anakin, pushing his head back forward as he bit and sucked a trail down Anakin’s shoulder blades. It wasn’t a spot he’d considered before, but now, hearing the way Anakin begged to be marked and owned, he’d do it every time he could. 

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin gasped out. “Let me ride you. Please I- I wanna see your face when you come. I wanna watch. Ugh let me see you-”

“You wanna bounce on my cock on that throne? Claim it as ours and ours alone?” Obi-Wan pulled out of him, letting Anakin stand up straight again, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around. 

“I want everyone to know that no one else is worthy of my seat on your lap and on our throne,” Anakin finally had the chance to kiss Obi-Wan’s neck, savoring the salty taste of sweat beneath his tongue as he worked bruises into his skin, pulling back to watch them blossom. 

He walked Obi-Wan backward until his knees buckled behind him against the edge. One small push from Anakin and he fell back, seated and staring at the man before him. Anakin’s hair was already a mess from Obi-Wan’s endless tugging and Anakin’s own writhing. His face had a gorgeous sheen of sweat across it, bottom lip swollen from where he had most likely been biting it to keep from having his moans echo too loudly across the walls. Most importantly, Obi-Wan saw every single mark on him that said _Property of Emperor Kenobi_ so no one doubted that this man was claimed. 

Anakin slid into Obi-Wan’s lap, letting Obi-Wan slide his hands up his sides and over the curve of his shoulders to lay on either side of his neck. One twist of his wrist and he had Anakin’s neck under his palm. Just as Anakin sunk down on Obi-Wan, tilting his head back at being full again, Obi-Wan squeezed his fingers on either side of Anakin’s neck. 

Slowly the lightheadedness seeped into Anakin, pulling himself from the pleasure he might have been feeling from grinding into Obi-Wan’s hips, making circles against him, before rocking up and down. Just as he was about to sink back down Obi-Wan released him, letting the blood rush back into his head and the feeling of Obi-Wan’s cock return to his senses all at once. 

“Mmm, do that again,” Anakin moaned out as he caught his breath again, trying to focus on fucking himself on Obi-Wan, knowing he was doing a poor job at it. 

Again Obi-Wan pressed on the sides of his neck after Anakin had caught his breath. He watched as Anakin relaxed into it, let his head tilt back and let his rhythm become unsteady before releasing him. It was enough for now, something they could explore later, Obi-Wan thought as he moved his hands down to Anakin’s ass, helping him up and down faster as his legs started to tire out. 

“Anakin you ride me so well. So devilish on the throne with me. Right where you belong,” Obi-Wan praised just to hear Anakin whine. 

Eventually, Obi-Wan tugged Anakin forward to lean on him as he thrust up into him, faster and faster as they chased their orgasms. He slid a hand between their bodies to grab Anakin’s cock, pumping him hard as he fucked into Anakin. Anakin was panting into his ear, every little hitch of his breath and strain of his voice clear as crystal now. 

He kept hitting that spot, that beautiful, pleasurable spot inside Anakin over and over. Anakin bit down into Obi-Wan’s shoulder as he neared his own orgasm, letting go to kiss the skin a few times, _I’m so close, right there, please, faster, Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan, right there, right-_ he bit down hard into Obi-Wan’s shoulder again as he came between them. 

His legs shook beneath Obi-Wan’s touch as he clenched around him, riding out his own orgasm and giving just enough to get his love to the same point. Obi-Wan spilled into him with his own cry of _Anakin_ on his lips, kissing the divot of his shoulder and up his neck. 

As their heartbeats rested, Force presences slinking back into themselves after shattering in every direction at their mutual orgasm, Anakin moved to lay across Obi-Wan’s lap. He didn’t care that they were still messy. That was a problem for a different day. 

“Anakin, you’ll have to move,” Obi-Wan laughed, a bit of himself poking out from his royal facade that was already coming to cloud him again. 

“No,” Anakin teased, snuggling into Obi-Wan more. 

“At least let me clean up.”

Anakin reached a hand out to summon his shirt from the floor, using it as a makeshift towel. It was ripped anyways so who cared now what it was used for. He cleaned Obi-Wan’s chest and the small bit that had gotten on his arm from laying on Obi-Wan before dramatically throwing it onto the floor in front of the throne. 

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan grumbled. It’s hard to be frustrated after all that, but he really _did_ need to move or get dressed or something. 

“No,” Anakin looked up at him. “I will be staying right here, as I am. It’s what I want.” He snuggled back down, head resting on Obi-Wan’s chest as he curled up into a ball, sapping as much warmth from his love as he could. “Besides, I have to make sure no one comes in here to flirt with you again.”

“Fine,” Obi-Wan sighed out with a shake of his head and a laugh. “But I’m not subjecting our subjects to your body. That’s for my eyes only.”

He held a hand out himself to summon his black cloak from the floor, draping it delicately over where Anakin lay, making sure to at least keep him semi-respectable. There was far too much to cover for the both of them, but maybe, just maybe, it would make negotiations shorter. And give him more time to worship the man in his lap instead. 

“No one messes with what’s mine,” Anakin whispered against Obi-Wan’s skin before shouting to the guards. “We’re ready for the next!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author is looking at this like "wow I really went there." I hope y'all enjoyed this!! And as always if there were typos: no there weren't.


	5. Verse 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am genuinely very excited about this chapter. It's not like last chapter, but it does put in motion the actions that will be unraveling in the final two chapters. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> TW for some very very very mild not-ok touching if that's not your thing. Starts at "A pit formed..." and ends after "You're all dismissed..."

Anakin was dressed to kill, storming into session. His court had arrived, waiting patiently as ever for their Emperors to walk through the front doors. He had stolen one of Obi-Wan's jackets, appreciating the tailored cut on his waist as an accent to his swooping red silk gown and a long silver body chain that slung from his neck and around his hips. Black was always the color but today, today was for revenge. And it's a dish best coming from a man in red. The double thigh-high slits really sold the point. The talon rings adorning his fingers sold it even better.

"Emperor Kenobi," Senator Argente bowed into the room. 

"Try again," Anakin pursed his lips, sweeping his tongue over his teeth before a small click fell from his mouth. "It's impolite to address someone incorrectly."

"Emperor Skywalker! My apologies. We had expected Kenobi for today's meetings."

"As you all did but he's a bit _tied up_ at the moment. I don't believe he will be in attendance."

"Why did you summon us then!" Senator Greejatus yelled, standing from his seat. "A waste of time if only the Emperor's pet is here."

Subtly Anakin flicked his hand under the table as he took his seat in Obi-Wan's place, discarding his jacket to show the tiny straps barely holding his dress up. He smirked as the senator started clawing at his neck, panic coming across his face as nothing was there, and yet everything allowing him to breathe was blocked. 

"You either take up your negotiations with me today or I can have one of my royal guards drag your body back home. What will it be?"

A murmuring of _yes sirs_ settled amongst the senators before Anakin let the Force choke go, smiling and sitting up straight as the senator gasped for air. 

"Awhh, don't go choking on your aspirations senator," Anakin laughed into the room. 

He was a menace on the wrong side of the table, letting his arms rest next to him, legs crossed, and seemingly radiating wicked energy. It was pulsing around the room, skittering behind each member of the court in a tiny little laugh.

They feared him. Now to see if they respected him. 

"Senator Argente. I hear you are requesting aid from the Empire? Care to inform me of the situation on your planet?"

"Y-Yes Emperor Skywalker."

"Don't tell him," Senator Greejatus scoffed into the room again. "He belongs on a lap as a consort. The only reason he's here is Kenobi's little whore. He doesn't hold power at all."

"And, Senator, are you afraid your request won't be heard and granted? You believe in your heart that Emperor Kenobi won't hear from me later this evening and know of your requests?"

"Oh you'll see him, but whether or not your mind or mouth is clear enough to _articulate_ our requests is of another matter."

"I see. Would it amicable to record our session today? Therefore your exact words can be _articulated_ properly back to your ruler?"

"It would be immensely preferred to your memory, Emperor Skywalker."

"Your request is granted."

Anakin called for a few of his guards, informing them of his needs for a recording device, preferably two, to sit on the table before them. Quickly his guards came back, setting the small contraptions down. 

"Before you leave, can you please show Senator Greejatus his proper placement? I believe he belongs with the rest that showcase rude behaviors in my court."

"Yes your grace," the guard spoke before summoning another to his side. 

They grabbed the senator by the crooks of his shoulders, pulling him backward as he begged for forgiveness, toppling over his chair. He was dragged down the hallway by the guards, his cries becoming softer before Anakin finally pulled the court doors closed with one flick of his hand. 

"Now, Senator Argente may I hear your request for aid? Speak clearly so your transmission can be heard nicely by your Emperor later."

Oh, it was a game. A pesky little game that Anakin adored. These men didn't know. They had no understanding of true power and their place as his pawns. Anakin could do anything he wanted, and he would continuously show it, just to play with each little mouse in the room. 

Carefully and methodically he clicked each pawn into place on his gameboard, faking an air of interest to their requests. The recorders weren’t even on and yet not a single Senator had noticed. They were all speaking, waiting their turn for Anakin to speak until one decided it was simply his turn to go and speaking his request into the device. He didn’t dare to turn an eye to Anakin and speak his request properly. 

“I wish to bring forth a request to reinstate Senator Clovis onto the court. I believe-”

“You believe what Senator?” Anakin leaned forward onto the table, head perched on where his hands were clasped together. 

“I believe, _Skywalker_ , that Senator Clovis was wrongly dismissed by your hand. Only the Emperor can dismiss a member of the court, and I don’t remember him agreeing with your decision.”

“And what makes you believe that Emperor Kenobi makes decisions without my prior consent and approval on the issue?”

Anakin was twisting his talon rings around his fingers, extending his hand out into the harsh light of the room to watch the diamonds glitter. He flexed his fingers out perfectly before setting them on the table, letting the points scratch against the table in a shuddering screech. 

“He doesn’t require your consent,” the Senator barked.

“Awh, Senator. You see, everyone needs consent. But it seems that you share Clovis’ same mindset on the matter, and therefore I no longer need you either.”

“This is outrageous!” the Senator slammed his fist on the table. “How dare you defend a Rebel, a- a Republic scum and Senator! You are a traitor to the Galactic Empire for choosing that- that Representative from Naboo over us!”

“You mistake our loyalties _Senator_ ,” Anakin came to stand, leaning over the table as he glared and growled at the man. “My loyalties are to Emperor Kenobi alone. And him to me."

“How _dare_ you renounce the Empire you serve!”

“I don’t _serve_ the Empire. I _am_ the Empire.”

Anakin was seething now, digging his talons into the table and glaring down his opponent at the other end of the table. In a quick retraction of his rage, Anakin went to walk around the table, adjusting his crown so it sat high on his head. He touched a hand of the back of each senator’s chair until he got to the one in question. He pulled the back of his chair out a bit, leaving enough space for Anakin to stand between it and the table before seductively coming to sit on it. He pulled the senator’s chair back forward with the Force, letting the senator’s chin sit on the edge of his heel from where Anakin crossed his legs. 

“I have full control of this Galactic Empire as an equal to Emperor Kenobi. In fact, you’ve all been hand-selected by me. Each and every one of your pleas for aid and battle requests were vetted and approved by me.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Emperor Kenobi rules!”

“Blasphemy!”

The room erupted in a swarm of hands beating on tables and screams of Anakin’s inability to rule. Every jeer was thrown into the room, from Anakin’s age to his horrid behavior during court meetings. His wardrobe, his general demeanor. Anakin wasn’t immune to it. Each thrown insult hit him like the knives he hid beneath his skirts. He took them with as much pose and polish as ever, never letting the crown on his head slip. 

He pushed his heel into the Senator’s chest and raised a hand into the air as a warning. The entire room silenced, each soul on edge for what that hand meant. How that hand controlled the Force and could kill them all in a second. 

The moment all the senators quieted Anakin felt discomfort coming from Obi-Wan in their bond. He tensed, unsure what could be causing him pain, ready in a second to jump off the table and down the hall to him. But he settled, a push of relaxation coming towards Anakin in assurance that Obi-Wan was okay. 

“Now now,” Anakin smirked. “Tell me, why couldn’t someone like me rule?”

The room erupted again before Anakin slammed his mechno-hand down on the table, letting it crack beneath his touch and leave a permanent handprint in the stone. 

“One at a time. Didn’t mother teach you manners?”

“I believe I can speak for us all,” Senator Gunary spoke. “We all believe you to be too abrasive for politics. And unfortunately, that mixed with your, well, preferred femininity, seems like the wrong look for the Empire.”

Anakin pushed back hard against the Senator’s chest with his heel as he listened to Gunray’s remarks. The chair he was on wobbled back on two legs just a bit with the help of a Force push, causing the Senator to panic. Anakin laughed and laughed before jumping back down to his feet to circle the room. 

“My femininity?” Anakin started. “So if I were to be more masculine, like Emperor Kenobi, that would suddenly make me a fit ruler of the Empire? Less dresses, which might I say offer far better breathability than these pants you wish for me to wear. Less revealing clothing? More tailored suits?”

“It is only the start. You were not a Sith to begin with so how can any reasonable ally to the Empire believe you have the Empire’s best wishes in mind.”

“I haven’t seen a Jedi in years. I haven’t aligned with the Jedi. But due to a past in which I _chose_ this path rather than being raised and subjected to it, I’m lesser?”

“Emperor Skywalker, please understand, we mean no ill. I am simply answering your question as a good servant of your majesty Emperor Kenobi who has appointed you as his speaker today.”

“He didn’t appoint me,” Anakin sighed into the room, clearly annoyed. “I am here of my own accord as your _ruler_. How many times do I have to tell you?! Until you’re all dismissed from my court?”

Anakin whistled loudly into the room summoning two more guards who grabbed Senator Gunray by his arms and dragged him out the room. Two down, seven more to go. This was such a fun game. 

"Now, back to the matter at hand. Who else has political requests or negotiations that need to be attended to?"

Anakin paced the room, the hard bottom of his heels clicking at an anxiously slow pace. He dragged his hand across the back of every senator's seat and smiled at the overturned seats of those who decided they wouldn't respect him. 

Court meetings were very tiresome and boring when Obi-Wan wasn't around to tease Anakin or use the Force to play at his pretty little hole. No this was boring, and terribly dull. Anakin wondered why Padme had bothered to go into politics like this. How she had rejected his offer for a place with the Empire was beyond him. At least here she didn't have to be polite to insufferable men. She could have spoken her mind and held the highest honors. 

After rounding the table he came back to sit in front of the same senator, putting his leg out on the armrest and relaxing back. He titled his head at him, watching his prey as he tried to speak about some crazy scheme to find a missing holocron he believed was on his planet. Little did he know Anakin found it months ago with Obi-Wan on a little vacation in wartime. 

“Request denied,” Anakin smirked. “You don’t have a strong enough basis for your proposal and, bluntly, I don’t believe you could find it even if you tried with a million credits and your best men.”

“You know Skywalker, I’m tired of you. Why don’t we have a little fun instead.”

A pit grew in Anakin’s stomach at the way the senator contorted his face to look like the dark side in flesh: a wicked grin and tongue darting over his front row of teeth. He tried to keep his resolve about the situation, refusing to move and sitting taller. They knew the rules. 

“Emperor Kenobi isn’t here to save you, is he baby boy?” The senator cooed as he reached a hand out to Anakin’s thigh, brushing up his skirt lightly before Anakin slapped him across his cheek, his rings leaving a large scrape across the delicate flesh. 

“You don’t get to touch me,” Anakin sneered. “Your hands don’t get an inch of my skin.”

He didn’t know what came over him. Anakin’s heartbeat quickened in his chest, a harsh pounding like water against rock, threatening to weather his ribcage. The hairs on the back of his neck stood and it felt like the senator’s hand remained there even after he had removed it. Every sense was suddenly heightened and dulled at the same time. Time slowed to the beating of his pulse in his ears as it felt…

_Wrong_

“Awhh, little pet doesn’t want to play,” the senator laughed at Anakin’s reaction, crossing his arms across his chest. 

Anakin called his knife to him from where it was strapped to his thigh, shoving it into the Senator's face quickly, stopping it millimeters from the bridge of his nose. He spun it in the air a few times before digging the tip of it into his skin. 

“Little pet plays, just not the way you like,” Anakin came to whisper in his ear. “And I don’t think little pet's _owner_ would be too pleased to see you abusing them.”

He released the knife in the Force, letting it slash the Senator's nose as it dropped down into his hand, catching it gracefully. Jumping off the table he came back to his seat, Emperor Kenobi’s seat, at the head of the table.

“You’re all dismissed. Permanently,” Anakin smiled into the room, playing with the edge of his knife. 

“You don’t have the power to do that,” they all yelled furiously into the room.

“ _I_ am the Emperor of the Galactic Empire, Slayer of Sidious and Keeper of his Kyber Crystal. I, Anakin Skywalker, have sole jurisdiction over the personal and political bearings of this Empire and its constituents. I have rank over one Emperor Kenobi. And I WILL be obeyed.”

He stood over the glossy wood around the edge of the table, slamming his knife down into it and letting it stand up. His Force presence flared around him and shoved all the chairs away from the table, slamming senators up against the wall in a furry. The chairs on the floor crashed against the metal walls, cracking and shattering as Anakin kept pushing them.

“How long have you ruled?” One brave voice piped up into the room.

“Six years. But I’ve been a ruler since birth. Chosen by the Force, simply awaiting my destiny.”

“And what is Kenobi to you?”

“An Emperor. A lover. And most importantly, an equal,” Anakin paused, moving his gaze harshly between each living presence left in the room. “Have I made my _request_ clear?”

“Yes Emperor Skywalker,” they all mumbled out.

“Good. Now get lost. If I find you in my halls within the next hour you’ll meet the same fate as the others.”

Anakin turned his back to them all, coming to sit up on the table again and clean the underside of his nails with the tip of his knife. He listened as they all scurried out the door frantically, one of them trying to bring his chair back to the table before remembering that manners weren’t something Anakin cared about anymore. Finally, when they were all gone Anakin slid back on the table, laying against the cool surface, and sighing out the tension he’d been holding in his shoulders.

“So uncivilized,” he mumbled in his best mock of Obi-Wan’s voice. 

After a few moments, destressing himself, he got up and made his way down the hallway to where Obi-Wan was waiting for him. From so far away he could only make out strong emotions, things that Obi-Wan purposely wanted him to feel, or things he felt immensely. It’s what made Anakin so worried earlier, but so long as Obi-Wan didn’t call for him in a panic, he must have been okay. 

As Anakin got closer to his room, he felt the arousal from Obi-Wan pulsing through their bond, simmering and bubbling over slowly like magma at the end of a volcanic eruption. It slid and warmed Anakin as he reached the door, excited to see his other half inside. 

"I thought I told you no meditating," Anakin smiled walking into their shared room. 

He left Obi-Wan tied up on their bed, kneeling perfectly at the center of it. The ropes looked so pretty around him, the way they pulled his arms behind his back, pushing his shoulders up and chest out. The loops around his strong forearms and biceps accented his years of strength training. The clean line of knots between his arms capturing Anakin’s eyes down to where his hands lay against his bare ass. It was something simple, but it was absolutely divine. 

"How can I keep from meditating when your presence is so ravishing in the Force?" Obi-Wan opened his eyes to Anakin. He pushed himself up higher on his knees so he wasn't sitting against his calves, showcasing himself as a prize to be won.

"Ravishing? That's an evocative word,” Anakin tucked a finger under Obi-Wan’s chin, pulling his face up to look at him. “Tell me, how am I ravishing?"

“Ravishing in that your anger and amusement at our court oozes across our bond like syrup. It’s sticky, sweet, and easy to get trapped in as a fly on the wall of your mind.”

Anakin pulled Obi-Wan forward closer to the edge of the bed with the Force, careful not to hurt him as he slid across their sheets. Once he was near the edge Anakin put his foot up on the bed, the inside of his thigh next to Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Obi-Wan leaned his head to the side to rest against the smooth skin of Anakin’s leg. 

“How did it go?” Obi-Wan asked as he relaxed.

“I fired them all. Killed a few.”

“Only a few?” Obi-Wan moved to kiss the inside of Anakin’s thigh. “I’m proud. That’s a personal best for your days overseeing court sessions.”

“Keep kissing there,” Anakin sighed, letting his head rollback. “I want you to replace it. Kiss it.”

“Replace what dear one?” Obi-Wan asked, worry pushing into their Force bond. “Did they touch you?!”

Obi-Wan undid his ropes with the Force, pulling them off him as quickly as possible to reach out to Anakin. It was the wrong move, Anakin still holding onto his power with whatever shred of energy he still had to keep up his facade.

“I thought I told you no Force,” Anakin tsked into the room.

“Anakin this isn't funny,” Obi-Wan was starting to panic into the room. “They broke my rules.”

Anakin grabbed one of Obi-Wan’s hands, suddenly exhausted from his anger, rage, frustration, and perhaps even more. He had fully expected to come back here, see his beautiful boyfriend tied up, and devour him in every possible way. But he couldn’t do it. Not today. 

He moved Obi-Wan’s hand up the inside of his thigh until it sat right where the senator had touched him. The warmth from his hand seeped into his skin and covered the memory of it, replacing an unwanted touch with a warm, loving, wanted one. 

“Anakin, I will murder them all. I will-”

“Touch me,” Anakin breathed out, grabbing Obi-Wan’s other hand and placing it on his hipbone. “Obi-wan… Please.”

Obi-Wan slid his palm up Anakin’s hipbone, pulling the silky fabric with him. He pushed his other hand up Anakin’s thigh until his thumb caught the slit in the fabric. Slowly, dragging the fabric up, he pulled it over Anakin’s head, body chain coming along with it. He sat back down on his calves and kissed up Anakin’s thigh, removing the harness for his knife, and letting it drop to the floor. 

“Show me where,” Obi-Wan looked up at Anakin before him. 

“Here.” Anakin slid his hand with Obi-Wan’s over his thigh, watching as Obi-Wan left a trail of air-light kisses against his skin with each movement. He moved his hand over his hips, over the small O scar on his right hip. “Here,” he said again. Obi-Wan kissed the small O that marked Anakin as his before Anakin trailed his hand further up, stopping over his heart. “Here.” And Obi-Wan obeyed. Their hands stopped of Anakin's neck. “Here.” And Obi-Wan obeyed. 

Anakin took his time, pointing out each and every part of him he felt needed fixing by Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan enjoyed the ability to catalog and map every inch of him. Of learning where every new scar had developed and each new stretch mark or freckle. He wanted to see all the places Anakin had changed over the eight years now they knew each other. To see how his love had transformed and yet at his core still remained the same man he knew so long ago. 

Finally, the tips of their fingers grazed Anakin’s lips. 

“Here.”

Obi-Wan pulled Anakin into his lap on the bed, letting Anakin settle into the space that was created perfectly for him. He kissed him passionately, feeling the small traces of Anakin’s tears as he cried into their kiss. 

“I can’t do it,” Anakin whispered into their kiss. “I can’t rule like this anymore.”

“Let me help,” Obi-Wan whispered back. “I hate seeing you so burdened.”

“I can’t put the crown on and the mask that follows anymore Obi-Wan. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t-can’t keep putting you in front of our enemies like bait. It’s not fair.”

“I’ll do it for you. Always for you.”

“I can’t. I just… I don’t know what I want but it’s not this. Not Emperor and Emperor. I just…”

Anakin kissed Obi-Wan again, running his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair at the base of his neck as they kissed lightly. It wasn’t charged or moving towards something more. This was a comfort Anakin needed: to know after everything Anakin was capable of, of the deaths he’d wrought across the galaxy, and the pain he’d caused so many and the anger that came from Anakin’s mouth, that Obi-Wan would still want to kiss his lips at the end of the day and be known to him. 

“Place your burdens on me,” Obi-Wan whispered after Anakin pulled back, resting his forehead on Obi-Wan’s. “My dearest. My Anakin. What can I do to help?”

“Will you stay with me, no matter what?”

“I vowed myself to you many months ago and I will _never_ renounce those. I am yours as much as you are mine.”

Anakin told Obi-Wan of his wishes as he calmed. Of what had to be done in preparation and what would become of them during their plan. It wasn’t fleshed out. It was weak, full of holes, and poor chances. But in their state, anything that sounded like fun, like a chance to create something for themselves, was hope enough. 

In the morning Anakin went down to the royal blacksmith with Obi-Wan’s crown. He was careful not to wake him, as it was early and Obi-Wan deserved his sleep from their activities the night before, comforting Anakin through the only way he knew how: kisses and soft sex combined with beautiful laughter and reminiscing. 

He took Obi-Wan’s crown, digging it out from its place of honor on Obi-Wan’s vanity. 

When Obi-Wan woke in the morning Anakin had already gone out for the day, taking his tour of the halls and checking in with his guards. As he finished dressing and went to put his crown on he saw an addition that shook him to his core. 

Anakin had melded Sidious’ kyber crystal to the middle point as a shining, red centerpoint. 

He was now truly, fully, and entirely both Emperor Kenobi, Ruler of the Galactic Empire, and Master Kenobi, Emperor of the Sith. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone should honestly help me out with a regular sleep schedule. I write fic WAY too late into the night. Then again, is it _really_ your passion if you're not constantly sleep-deprived by it?  
> This was also kind of strange interpretation of this verse, but it might make sense more later. I hope. Or it might just stay a strange interpretation and that's cool too! 
> 
> ANYWAY, thank you for coming by again. <3


	6. Verse 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all. This took a bit as America went Through It TM for a bit there and also because this just took more for me to write than other chapters. I hope you enjoy and I am so sorry for the wait and that this chapter is longer than all the other chapters. 
> 
> CW: this does have minor blood and knifeplay at the end but not like, sexy kind. You'll see. 
> 
> And one big thank you to [ ylisseanprince ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ylisseanprince/pseuds/ylisseanprince) for all of her help on this chapter and beta'ing it. This would not have been possible without her helping me brainstorm this POV and cheering me on the past few weeks.

Tense. Nervous. The royal guard had been using both to describe their Emperor for weeks, the gossip running rampant down the hallways and to the infirmary. Emperor Kenobi had given out strange orders and demanded they refocus their efforts to planets and systems that didn’t matter to them in the long run. Some had gone so far as to state he was a bit deranged, but they didn’t stay alive long enough for a proper explanation. 

Truly Obi-Wan hadn’t meant to cause eyes to divert his way as he made his rounds. He tried to keep his emotions in check as much as possible, locking them deep into the pit of his stomach since the morning he woke with that kyber crystal melded onto the front of his crown. Since the morning his dearest vanished into thin air. 

He should have known by the lack of his Force presence that morning that Anakin had left. But he didn’t. He hadn’t even noticed until it grabbed his lungs and squeezed, his ribs feeling as if they poked straight into the delicate tissue— his anatomy reconstructed while he kept a calm face in front of Savage who had come to for a royal visit. 

He could hear every jeer and hushed laugh down the hallways that he ruled. The mirror didn’t lie to him about how he had lost weight and his eyes carried more than just exhaustion below them. Anakin’s presence, something that had wrapped itself so intricately into Obi-Wan’s, was gone. Obi-Wan didn’t even know where his own presence began anymore, and now that he felt it, he realized all the fraying edges and angled cuts were from where Anakin’s was missing. 

His own Force presence wasn’t nearly as splendid as that of Anakin’s blood red and crimson. 

As much as Anakin’s heart. 

There wasn’t goodness poking around the corner in Anakin’s warm and teasing presence, beckoning him to come back, to find him and wrap himself around it. No matter how stitched-together Obi-Wan’s facade was, he always knew he could continue it with Anakin nearby. And now his resolve was slipping, betrayal growing as a nasty toxin he pulled his dark side energy from. 

Taking another lap around the halls of his, and now _only_ his, Empire he saw a flash of dark, dirty blonde hair bracing against the wall to the hangar bay. Chest heaving as he wiped something from his face with the back of his hand, the motion was familiar. 

Obi-Wan almost turned the other way. His mind must have been playing tricks again. The man had to just be a servant with enough look and posture to conjure up the image of Anakin in his mind. But then he felt the second half of himself reach out, seeping towards him and connecting with the frayed edges of his presence. The life coming back into his veins and sinking comfortably under his skin. 

He knew him the instant burgundy touched navy. 

He’d know him blind. 

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan yelled, quickly walking down the hallway toward him. As he got closer he worked to keep his mental shields up, concealing his flurry of emotions down so Anakin could speak to him. So he could hear all of the truth without muddying the waters of his elation that Anakin had returned to him. 

He tried to smooth himself out, straighten his crown and press the wrinkles out of his jacket best as possible. But as he approached, Obi-Wan could tell Anakin wasn’t himself, if his slumped posture wasn’t the first thing to give it away. The permanent scowl on his face did little to hide his exhaustion, and his golden eyes were void of expression in a way Obi-Wan hadn’t seen in years. Not since Shmi. 

“Force, where have you been?!” Obi-Wan lightly scolded Anakin as he came to stand next to him. 

The leather chestplate Anakin donned was stained in streaks of red. Dried, cracking blood settled into the crevices of the intricate curls across the front of it, holding the remnants of whatever bodies he slain in his absence. His hair was braided down his back as best as possible, the curls framing his face in fury. The black skirt he wore was frayed inches above the floor, rips and tears so plentiful across the fabric it barely looked like cloth anymore. 

“I’ve been away.” Anakin’s voice was void of himself. Void of everything, even emotion. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Obi-Wan watched Anakin for hints, clues as to where he was. His hand placed at his hip, thumb and first finger circled around the bottom of a hilt; a lightsaber he shouldn’t even have at the moment. But that was a point for later, for a calmer Anakin more in tune to reason that emotion. The tips of his fingers were dancing over the hilt of his knife, fidgeting.

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Anakin.” Obi-Wan stood up a bit straighter, noticing Anakin’s anger bleed into their bond. “I asked, where have you been?”

“And I told you. _Away_. Not like you had any want to try and find me,” Anakin pushed past Obi-Wan’s shoulder, walking down the hallway away from him.

“It’s a bit more _difficult_ to chase you down, dear one, when you’ve decided to give me sole rulership of an Empire overnight.” Obi-Wan reached his hand backward toward Anakin, using the Force to capture Anakin’s feet and keep him planted in his spot. “You’re not leaving until we discuss this.”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Anakin bit out, trying to pull away and failing. “I’d like to shower.”

“You should have considered your stench earlier,” Obi-Wan turned to him, pushing him back against the wall and trapping him there. “You have a 'fresher on board the _Resolute_.”

"My most humble apologies, _your highness_."

For all the times Obi-Wan had upset Anakin, or Anakin had come back with a snarl in his chest and a bite in his words, he'd _never_ seen Anakin so vicious. Through everything, he tried to catalog what happened just before Anakin left. What happened while he was gone. Which senators he might have talked to that would have twisted his words later. How he had hurt someone whose absence hurt more than words.

This wasn't Anakin. This was rage. And Obi-Wan didn't know how to deal with rage in human form. 

"Don't berate me with that tone. You're the one who left for what felt like a millennia. The one who _betrayed_ me by going on a slaughterfest across the galaxy. Your anger toward me is unwarranted and unbefitting of an Emperor."

" _Former_ Emperor thank you."

"You are still an Emperor, Anakin. Your actions-"

"I don't want that anymore." 

Obi-Wan kept looking for a hint of Anakin's true self, eyes fluttering over his face as if somewhere the bronze of his skin and small smattering of blood and scrapes would reveal an answer to him. Somehow within the pores and lines of this person in front of him he might find Anakin, buried away and cowering in a corner, hiding from this hurricane of revenge. 

"You don't want _that_ anymore? Or _me_ anymore? Which is it Anakin?"

Anakin was silent at that, a scowl on his face as he clenched his jaw, gritting his teeth together. Obi-Wan had given him a choice, and he still refused to take it. 

How typical of the man he loved. 

"Anakin, you know this wasn't part of our plan. What happened to reform? What happened to fostering a peace between the Empire and the Republic. Padme would have-"

" _Kriff_ you! _Fuck_ the plan! Burn it all I don't care anymore!"

Obi-Wan barely had time to react before Anakin's fist came down against his chest. Filled with malice and pain, straight into the center of his ribs over and over again. 

"Anakin, stop this!" Obi-Wan grabbed his wrists holding him back, trying to shield his own anger as Anakin fought his hold. He pushed back against him with his strength and whatever poor conjuring of the Force he could allow. 

"You lied to me! You stole me from the Jedi and used me for your own selfish wants! You _lied_ to me!"

Anakin was irate, screaming so loudly into the hallway that a few guards had come running, ready to fight. They backed away slowly as they saw who it was between, and as the hairs on their arms started to stand at the impact of two Force users fighting each other in physical and manifested strength. 

"Anakin, I never stole you," Obi-Wan tried with as level a voice as possible, wavering only slightly at the idea that Anakin could have ever thought his Sith choice wasn't his own. 

But the idea of it, that perhaps in some twisted perception in a parallel universe Obi-Wan wasn't a part of, he did steal Anakin. He did convince him in grief and anguish to join. And in those same moments, Anakin had been thirsty for power and starved of love. But he’d had his fill now, and Obi-Wan… Just a pawn in a political game where he thought he was king. 

Again, he choked it down. Told himself it wasn't true. But the more Anakin beat at him, pushed him back until Obi-Wan was less than an arm's length from the opposite wall, the more he believed it might be true. 

"-and you hated me and you used me and you broke every promise to me in the universe and I was never equal in power, I was just your little play thing never your love-"

"Anakin," Obi-Wan tried. 

"-the only promise I ever made to you I cared about and you didn’t even _think_ about me-"

"Anakin!"

"-you let this happen you probably ordered it yourself you bantha shit-"

" _Anakin_!" Obi-Wan's voice echoed off the wall, his anger finally slipping out so far he shoved Anakin across from him. Anakin barely skidded himself to a stop on his heels before hitting the wall.

"They killed her!" Anakin sobbed out as he sank to his knees. "They killed her and you- you- _you promised me!_ You said you’d protect her!"

Anakin unclipped his saber from his side, igniting it as he pointed it straight toward Obi-Wan, the glowing red heat not close enough for harm, but the thought was there. The intention. It wasn't for Obi-Wan though, that much he could tell. Obi-Wan poked slightly at Anakin’s mind through their bond. Barely a brush against it and all he felt was anguish. Pure and horrid anguish. 

Just as quickly as Anakin ignited it, the phasma beam shaking in front of Obi-Wan's face as Anakin sobbed, he dropped his hand to the floor, extinguishing the blade and letting the metal crash to the ground. 

"You promised me," Anakin let out in a shaky cry. "Padme's dead."

Obi-Wan watched him soothe himself, thinking back through every accusation Anakin just spit at him. Were they true? Did Anakin truly believe…? That was another point for another time. Maybe even a conversation to never have, something to catalog and correct about himself moving forward. 

“Anakin, I don’t understand. Padme died, yes. It was all over the holonews.”

“No, she didn’t just _die_. They killed her.”

Tentatively, Obi-Wan sat on the floor across from Anakin, keeping a safe distance from him as he watched Anakin try to soothe himself. He had a habit of sinking into himself after his rage died, cradling himself, making himself small. They had never spoken about it, Obi-Wan a bit too hesitant to ask, but he imagined it was from Anakin’s past that they never spoke about. Something he wasn’t allowed to know. 

But Anakin was always allowed his secrets, as Obi-Wan held his. He recognized they were their own individuals, even if Obi-Wan wished Anakin had a few less secrets than he cradled in his chest. 

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan started, cautiously. “I still don’t understand. _Who_ killed her?”

“Your precious court members. The ones I let live. They- they-” Anakin was working himself into a mess again. Obi-Wan sent a wave of calmness to him in their bond, letting it settle between the electric cracks of his rage and dilute his raw edges. 

He motioned for a guard to come over from his post down the hallway, knowing they were waiting for a command. It was easy, just a flick of two fingers and he was walking down the hallways, the butt of his staff hitting the floor in time with his footsteps. He regretted not knowing them all by name, but unfortunately, there were bigger names to know than his own guard. 

“I want you to get a team assembled. Six men. You know who I prefer if they’re available. This mission is for stealth. We’re already on the brink of a civil war it seems, I need you to go after all the previous members of my court still living-”

Anakin huffed out a chuckle, a single beat of laughter before he sniffled his nose. 

“There’s no need, Obi-Wan,” he started, letting his head roll back in laughter. “There’s no more court members to kill.”

“Anakin, what did you do?”

“I killed them. They killed Padme, they touched me, joked about me, and thought me lesser. It was only fair.”

Obi-Wan looked at him in horror, at the way his head tilted back in maniacal laughter caught between elation and the horrid edge of insanity. He had snapped. Far too gone, far too- something. Worse than his mother dying, and Obi-Wan couldn’t understand why. Out of all the people in the galaxy, why Padme?

Did he still…

“Come on, dear one,” Obi-Wan started, slipping a hand under Anakin as his laughter turned to cries again. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Obi-Wan picked Anakin up, bridal style, letting the black of his tattered skirt flutter behind him in the corridor as he was carried. Every eye turned down the sleek silver hallways as Obi-Wan walked, his steps entirely too loud against the floor. It took a bit but Anakin finally settled, something of a broken shard of black and red against Obi-Wan’s pale hands and straight posture. 

He glared at every new face that came scurrying down the hallways to see their Emperor alive, making the inhabitants of their capitol building gasp and run in terror. Obi-Wan would barely call Anakin’s current state living, but it was true, he wasn’t rotting away on some planet, never to be found again. Only his mind was there. But Obi-Wan had patched his scrapes when he was an apprentice, and helped him stitch his mind back after his mother’s death. He wouldn’t have been able to harness his rage any other way. 

After a long walk back to their quarters, Obi-Wan let Anakin down on his feet, noticing how heavy he leaned against Obi-Wan’s frame. Thankfully it seemed he had managed to tire himself out, but that didn’t mean Obi-Wan was going to let him go so easily. They had to talk about this. Talk before Anakin hid it so far in his mind he would never want to dig it out again. And talk about it before Obi-Wan convinced himself he was better off not knowing the truth. 

“Dear one, can you help me take off your armor?” Obi-Wan kissed his temple, trying to get the buckles on his side unclasped to shift it over his head. Anakin tried his best with one arm to work himself free, standing wobbly on his feet. Obi-Wan kept himself ready for any direction Anakin might fall, making sure they could at least get him out of the bigger parts of his elaborate outfit so his wounds could be tended to. 

“I can take care of it myself,” Anakin finally shoved off a bit, struggling to get himself free and stumbling on his feet before Obi-Wan caught his waist. “I don’t need your help.”

“Anakin, you can barely stand,” Obi-Wan huffed. “Don’t be so foolish.”

“You’re the foolish one.” Obi-Wan barely heard Anakin mumble under his breath, working to free himself from his bracers and stained leather glove over his mechno-hand. 

“Why am I the foolish one?”

Anakin whipped his head around to Obi-Wan, shock visible on his face that he had heard him. Obi-Wan continued helping Anakin undress, giving his blood-stained clothes to the few servants that had come to wash them, refusing to meet Anakin's gaze again. 

“For still loving me,” Anakin mumbled out again. “After all this.”

“I haven’t said I still love you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan spoke dryly. “That has yet to be determined.”

It burned like bad cantina liquor coming from his throat, the admission that Anakin had lost part of Obi-Wan’s heart in the betrayal. He felt Anakin’s worry, his shock, his grief mixing into their bond and Obi-Wan pushed it away from himself as best as possible. There was no reason why he should be made to feel guilty over decisions that were outside his control. 

Yet he still felt the sharp edge of his words and knew he couldn’t make Anakin suffer. He could be wicked and unkind to anyone who stepped into their throne room, to every court member that dared to speak ill about Anakin, and to every Sith that dared challenge him to a duel. But Anakin? To _his_ Anakin? 

“I can’t apologize. They were my choices,” Anakin started as Obi-Wan moved to settle him on their chaise. 

“No, you cannot. But you can start by talking to me,” Obi-Wan came to sit behind him, pushing the bottom edge of Anakin’s shirt up and over his shoulders to see the bruises, cuts, and scrapes along his back from his month-long rage fest across the galaxy. “So, Anakin, why did you leave?”

The servants that had taken Anakin’s armor away came back with medical supplies for Obi-Wan, knowing their job without having to be told what to do. They let Obi-Wan take the bacta and gauze patches he would need from them, the newer servant’s hands just a bit unsteady. 

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan nodded at them. “Cancel the rest of my visits for the day. Give them my apologies if they matter to us. And have dinner delivered here…” Obi-Wan paused for a second before adding _please_ as they walked away. 

A long silence fell between them, Obi-Wan refusing to ask his question again. He pushed out with the Force to run along Anakin’s back, seeing if he had any damage to himself that Obi-Wan couldn’t visually see. For how worn he looked, and how many bruises and gashes he had along his back muscles, he was surprisingly free of internal injuries. 

“I wanted to see my mother,” Anakin started after a moment far too long and tense for Obi-Wan’s liking. “I haven’t been to her grave in years and… I needed to feel her presence. Know she still loved me.”

“Anakin, you know your mother-” Obi-Wan stopped as Anakin put his hand into the air, taking a deep breath, forcing his shoulders up as Obi-Wan was working on his back before letting the tension roll from them. 

“Obi-Wan, please. Just…”

“Okay. I won’t interrupt.” Obi-Wan lightly brushed his fingers down Anakin’s spine, starting at the lowest scrapes on his sides as he continued. 

“I know she loves me. I don’t think she’d be happy with my choices, but… I’m her son. I’d hope, somehow, I’d do some right by her in the galaxy. So I went to visit her. She wasn’t too hard to find, thankfully. Tatooine doesn’t change much. Still sandy. And grimey. Full of outlaws like us."

Obi-Wan couldn't contain the small chuckle at Anakin believing they were outlaws. Yes his moral compass didn't always point North and he knew his reign wasn't free from his own monstrosities, but outlaws? That definition wasn't quite as suiting. 

"I wanted to stay for a while, have a few dinners with mom at her headstone and just, enjoy the sunset with her. Get our favorite meal from the local vendors and see where I came from. I hate the place. I can never learn to love it. But my mother is there, so there’s always a part of the planet I can learn to love.”

After patching up the first small cuts along Anakin’s lower back, Obi-Wan started on some of the burn marks and deeper gashes along his shoulder blades. He dipped a bit of the gauze into a cleansing solution, trying to clean the wound first otherwise the bacta would prove ineffective. Anakin hissed at the sting of it, scolding him for not calling a healer instead. 

“It’s my right to patch up my boyfriend. Besides, you can consider this payment for what you put me through”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Continue, Anakin,” Obi-Wan cut him off, not wanting to hear Anakin apologize without understanding what he was apologizing for. “You were on Tatooine, eating at your mother’s grave.”

“Yeah,” Anakin started again. “I decided to go to the cantina right around sunrise, just to relax a bit, see the local bounty hunters and generally know if I was noticeable outside of the capitol. Or if I could still look like half the menace I am inside these walls. That’s when I heard them all.” 

He paused, his Force presence shifting from melancholy to distressed, the tinges of it teasing the edges of their bond. From the way Anakin’s back muscles moved ever so subtly, Obi-Wan could tell he was nervous, poking at his bare skin and running his hands up and down as his own form of comfort. 

“I just listened, you know? Trying to be sly about it. Not interfere. And then I heard him yell it out, slide off his tongue in Huttese _That Senator Amidala, she’s finally dead!_ The second his hand hit the table with those credits, a round of drinks on him, my hand hit the hilt of my saber. What’s a cantina without a fight, right?”

Anakin chuckled once, the laughter reaching no part of him other than the exhale that escaped from his lungs. Obi-Wan could feel it, the distress and pain between them. But he still didn’t have a full answer, and maybe, just maybe, it was best for Anakin to sit in these feelings. Work through them without Obi-Wan interfering with this own wave of kindness in it. So he kept his emotions tucked behind a thinly veiled shield, just enough to keep them from bleeding through, but not enough to block himself from Anakin. 

“Turn around,” Obi-Wan beckoned, pulling on Anakin’s shoulders. 

He helped Anakin turn, motioning for him to lean against the back of the chaise and drape his legs over Obi-Wan’s own crossed legs. There were so many cuts along him, Obi-Wan barely knew where to start. Anakin should know better than to wear nothing but boots and a flimsy skirt to battle. Then again, Obi-Wan knew it wasn’t the first time Anakin had a death wish for himself. 

“What happened after you left Tatooine, Anakin?”

“I went to Coruscant,” Anakin offered shyly. “I went to find Bail at the senatorial complex. I thought he would be there to help oversee preparations for Padme’s funeral, given that he was one of her closest friends.”

Now that Obi-Wan was facing Anakin he could see how worried he had become, the flickering of his eyes and refusal to look up from his hands. The tired, _exhausted_ slump of his shoulders. How heavy his legs sat draped over Obi-Wan’s knees as he worked at the cuts and burn marks, rubbing the warm bacta into his skin. 

“It didn’t take much to find him. He doesn’t exactly blend in well to the rest of his surroundings. We caught up a bit-”

“Don’t lie to me, Anakin. There’s only a very small possibility Bail just accepted you with open arms.”

“Fine,” Anakin huffed. “I was bound during my time on Coruscant, with my consent.” He showed his wrist to Obi-Wan, the purple rings of clearly too tight cuffs blooming across his skin. “I wanted to be there for Padme’s funeral, and more importantly, I needed to know what happened. It didn’t take very long to learn it was our court members. Well, _ex_ -court members.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan sighed out, focusing on the few gashes on the outside of his thighs, wiping away the dried blood as best as possible. “They’re our _enemy_. The Republic and its senators are not exactly rooting for our victory right now. Or even peace. You might have just gone out and killed numerous innocent people.”

He was trying his best to keep his voice level, but Obi-Wan couldn’t help but let the small infliction of irritation settle into the last of his words. Anakin was trusting, that’s for sure. And it should never be a negative toward him as a character Obi-Wan would always remind himself. But, the idea that Anakin shipped himself to their opposition of four years, willingly, and listened to them without a word of advice-

“I trust Bail.”

“I know you do, Anakin, and it worries me. Please tell me you took more than just Bail’s words.”

“Of course. I investigated myself, interrogated them. I wouldn’t just kill to kill like that. I might be dark side and anger but you know me, Obi-Wan, I don’t just kill for fun. Not since the Tuskens at least. You have to believe me that I always have a reason.”

 _Do I know him? Do I really know him?_ Obi-Wan contemplated to himself, digging through his own feelings to see if he could answer the question. He had gotten to know Anakin so intimately in their time together. This man’s presence was as familiar and welcome as his own. So familiar he forgot it was around most times, settling into the comfort that was knowing Anakin like coming home after a long day. But his reactions to Padme. Anakin’s fury? How had Obi-Wan not known this man well enough to know where it stemmed from.

“I can believe you,” Obi-Wan offered to a distraught Anakin, watching and feeling him settle back into himself a bit. “But what I don’t understand is Padme. Have you-”

“No,” Anakin said too loudly into the space, cutting off Obi-Wan’s question before he even had the chance to hurt himself by asking. “No. I love _you,_ Obi-Wan. You. It’s always been you since we met.”

“Then why…”

“She’s all I had left," Anakin started with a sigh when it seemed Obi-Wan wouldn’t finish his sentence. “I couldn’t have Master Windu back. I didn’t know any of my family besides my mother. I couldn’t have the Jedi back. Padme was the only one who still found it within herself to be okay with me. Even after she said we couldn't date, that it was in both our best interests to just remain friends, I couldn't really hate her."

"But you bled that into your crystal, Anakin. She _hurt_ you."

"No. I hurt myself. I decided to grow feelings and come up with elaborate concepts as to how to keep us a secret. She was just stating the truth as I should have been seeing. And I told myself we could love under the synonym of compassion, but really, if Padme couldn't publicly display her relationship, then what were we more than two teenagers creeping around dark corners? That's no way to be in love, and I should have thought more about her and less about myself."

"That's perhaps the most introspective I've ever heard you Anakin," Obi-Wan picked up Anakin's wrist, pressing a delicate kiss to the inside of it, against the warm purple bruises. He held it delicately in his hand like a stalk of lavender as he slowly worked bacta his skin. It wouldn't help much with the bruising, but the warmth of it would feel good. 

"I know I normally don't think like that, but I had a lot of time to think on Coruscant. I had a lot of time and she… had far less."

Obi-Wan continued patching Anakin up in silence, though much of the fog and tension had rolled away between them. There was only one more small scrape along Anakin's arm before he was finished, sitting back to see all the small squares of gauze and shiny patches of bacta along Anakin. 

He was always known to see red. Obi-Wan knew that day one, how his unchecked emotions would roar to life like a volcano. Many times it was up to Obi-Wan to calm him, to reign in the smoke and flames into something more manageable again. But how could he have known with Anakin disappearing? How was he to help someone who didn't want it? Someone who left without the want to be found?

"Why don't you rest for a while, darling," Obi-Wan finally spoke, standing and coming to place a kiss at the top of Anakin's head. "Give the bacta a few hours to work and then we'll get you cleaned up in the 'fresher."

"You still love me?" Anakin sounded groggy, his eyelids drooping and body slumping into the chair, but his presence in their bond dripped of worry. 

"I love you," Obi-Wan smiled, the expression not quite pushing its way past his own emotional exhaustion. "I love you. Thank you for being honest with me, Anakin."

"I don't mean to hurt you," Anakin tried to finish his sentence but a yawn caught him. "I don't mean to."

"I know, dear one. Sleep. You'll feel better when you wake."

He pushed drowsiness and a heavy suggestion of sleep Anakin's way, feeling the bright glimmer of his Force presence simmer down into a lazy roll of red, like embers on coals that had been extinguished moments before. 

Obi-Wan waited until Anakin was fully asleep to leave their shared chambers, carefully closing the large doors to keep their loud shut from waking him. Anakin had insisted on normal doors rather than slide open ones for reasons of _but what if I want to come in all dramatic and whisk you away?_

There were very few places an Emperor could get away to when his own chambers were taken out of the equation. Very quickly, once he had taken a mere few steps down the hallway, a few advisors came to update him about the status of the war. 

_Not only are we fighting the Republic, but Emperor Skywalker has instigated enough of a divide in his actions to warrant rumors of a civil war._

_He's reckless, Emperor Kenobi, you must know this._

_He had no thought of you in the matter._

_It's not my place, but perhaps we should restrict his travels for the time being._

_With blame shifting to us for the Senator from Naboo, you must make a statement. You must denounce Emperor Skywalker's actions._

"Thank you," Obi-Wan turned to them, stopping abruptly when he reached the throne room doors. "I shall consider all of your concerns and chart an appropriate course of action. Now please, I'd like a moment to myself. It has been a stressful morning."

"Emperor Kenobi, I must insist we take action at once the Galactic Republic-"

"Leave!" Obi-Wan yelled at the advisors, watching them scurry away from his violence. 

The cool obsidian was grounding beneath him, one leg thrown up over the side and the other tucked beneath him. He carefully removed the crown from his head, shaking his hair out from the mangled mess it had become under its weight. 

This wasn't him. Maybe it was, but _Emperor Kenobi_ over the years just hadn't held the luster and graces that it should hold in his mind. It wasn't a title he wanted, or even liked being called. It was reserved for someone else, for a childhood remnant of a Sith deceived by his Master. 

He could barely admit it most days, the title he knew he wanted. The name that sung across his subconscious in a delicate whisper of compassion and belonging. But for years he felt undeserving of such a title, of such a name as that. He'd been willing to give up one title for another, Anakin only needed to ask. Or perhaps Obi-Wan. But this fear lurked right at the back of Obi-Wan's mind constantly, and so he simply avoided the matter. It was unimportant. 

But now it seemed the title might actually be more important than anything else. 

After hours of contemplation, he rose from his throne. He knew what had to happen, even if it might take some convincing from Anakin. A course of action had been started and now he was just following the will of the Force. 

Turning to leave the throne room, his head and mind felt infinitely better without the added weight pulling him down. 

* * *

"Wake up, dear one," Obi-Wan gently brushed his fingers through Anakin’s hair, rousing him from his sleep. His hair was still filthy from battle, the braid almost non-existent, but Obi-Wan was happy to at least feel it. Have it under his fingertips again after so long. “Let’s get you rinsed up and into a bath. Does that sound nice?”

Anakin hummed in appreciation at the idea, pushing his head into Obi-Wan’s hand more before losing the contact as Obi-Wan came to stand before him. He pulled Anakin up into his arms again, letting him cradle into his chest as he carried him the short distance to the ‘fresher. 

“Stand for me, love. Rinse yourself off in the water.”

Obi-Wan helped Anakin out of the few garments he still wore, letting them flutter to the floor as Anakin stepped past the glass door and into the warm stream of shower water. The steam from it was relaxing as Obi-Wan filled their bathtub, lighting a few candles around the edges and on their vanity as well before shutting the overhead lights off. 

“Isn’t someone being romantic,” Anakin chuckled as he stepped out of the shower.

“Consider it my apology for scaring you that I didn’t love you anymore.”

“No apology needed, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, coming behind him after he had finished undressing to kiss between his shoulder blades. “You had every reason to feel that way.”

Obi-Wan felt Anakin’s hands come around his waist for a second as he leaned forward to kiss his shoulder. It was sweet, loving, in a way they hadn’t been in a while. Obi-Wan knew all of his dark energy, all of his negativity, made him do things that seemed impossible for him to be so soft with another man. Truly he couldn’t be sentimental and caring after his horrors, but Anakin made him soft that way. Anakin bled into his Force presence and reminded him he was still worthy of warm touches and kind words, even if in the morning he’d be back to his wicked ways again. 

He slipped under the water first, beckoning Anakin to join him and lay against his chest. It was easy, a kind of familiarity that came in how their bond melded them together. Anakin had managed to wash his hair in the shower, so now Obi-Wan could simply run his fingers through the wet locks and rub Anakin’s scalp, something he knew always relaxed him. 

Cupped hands let warm water slide over Anakin’s chest, revealing that his wounds from earlier had almost all but healed themselves in the few hours Anakin had been asleep. The bruises around his wrists had started to heal. Legs tangled themselves together beneath the ripples, toes playing with each other as they settled into a small giggle fit. 

This was Anakin Skywalker as Obi-Wan Kenobi loved him. Not Emperor Skywalker. Not Sith Skywalker. Not his “play thing.” Not his “consort.” Just Anakin. 

Pure, blissful Anakin whose golden eyes, in Obi-Wan’s mind, sang with adoration for him with each passing minute. 

But bliss leaves, or tries to at least. Obi-Wan had left his comm nearby in case anyone might need him, as being an Emperor was always a full-time job. He reached for it as it buzzed, reading _Anakin Skywalker, Emperor of the Galactic Empire, has been found guilty of treason by Separatists systems._

Somehow Obi-Wan didn’t care. In fact, relief washed over his face to know that Anakin was finally free of his duties to the Empire. It wasn’t the way they had planned, nowhere close. They’d be fugitives for sure, and he’d have to calm Anakin once he found out. But they were free. 

And now in the middle of a civil war of their own creation. 

That’s what got Obi-Wan’s heart racing. 

"Dear one, can you face me?" Obi-Wan whispered, watching Anakin carefully turn in the bath water to sit across from him. "Beautiful. You’re so beautiful.”

Obi-Wan reached between them to run a hand down Anakin's chest, under the water to his waist, following the inside of his thigh, down to where his knees lie poking up from the water. He rested his hand there, letting his thumb draw circles in the divot of his knee before pulling back up to Anakin’s hip bones. He let his thumb trace the scars of an O and a K, realization hitting his brain so quickly he wondered if Anakin had placed it there. 

"I should have asked you this years ago," Obi-Wan started, staring at the water. "I convinced myself it was meaningless."

He thought back to every single time he had wanted to ask. In the morning before Anakin's 23rd birthday when the sunlight seemed just right and he seemed so excited. After Empire day, as the very last celebration ended and the large scale fireworks commenced. When Anakin killed a Republic senator that had spent the last hour berating Obi-Wan for his political games. In the moment after Anakin killed Sidious, saving his neck from the glowing red of his lightsaber. 

“Nothing you ask is meaningless,” Anakin smiled, grabbing Obi-Wan’s hands from under the water and putting them against his lips to kiss. 

“This is perhaps the worst time to ask. In fact, it is. But if I don’t do this now, I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance. And, well, I’d rather have the chance to articulate this than contemplate _what if’s_ for the next century.”

Anakin chuckled at him, the bath water sloshing just slighting from his stomach moving. 

“Anakin Skywalker,” Obi-Wan paused, making sure this is indeed what he wanted. The title he wanted to trade Emperor for. “Will you do me the honor of being my husband?”

His face went wide with awe? Shock? Obi-Wan couldn’t tell. That is, until Anakin’s Force presence lit up like sunrise after the darkest night, pushing love and thankfulness and happiness through their bond so heavily Obi-Wan wondered if this is what it was like to be a Lightsider. 

“Yes!” Anakin laughed out. “Yes! But I’m not wearing some big wedding ring. I only have one hand for rings and, while I love you, I have other much more fashionable ones to wear.”

“Of course, my dear,” Obi-Wan laughed. “But, I was thinking of something different. Something, well, I guess you could say more _Sith_ of us.”

Obi-Wan reached out with his hand to summon Anakin’s knife, letting the cool lapis lazuli flit into his palm against the warm water. 

“You already have me carved into you. A permanent placement of me on your skin. I… I was hoping you’d claim me in the same way,” Obi-Wan turned his eyes down from Anakin, shy for one of the rarest moments in his life. “I wish I would have thought about my placement on you more, but, you own my heart. All of it. And, if you’d like, I’d want your initials over it for all to see.”

Anakin tilted Obi-Wan’s chin up to look at him before taking the blade from his hand. He tried to move closer to him in the bathtub, the position a bit awkward, but nothing could take Obi-Wan and Anakin away from each other at this moment. 

“I’d love that,” Anakin breathed out. 

Obi-Wan watched as he held the tip of the blade against his chest, wincing only slightly as Anakin cut into his skin, flicking an A. S. in Sith rune against it. Small droplets of blood mixed with the same droplets of water against his skin before Anakin was done. He looked down at himself to see Anakin’s work, smiling that now the world knew. They were marked on each other’s skin for the galaxy to know forever. 

As Obi-Wan was looking down he didn’t notice Anakin cut a small portion on the palm of his hand, coming to rest it over the initials. 

“What-”

“Your blood runs in my veins, and my blood in yours. We are one,” Anakin smiled as he rested his hand over Obi-Wan’s heart. 

Obi-Wan reached down to take Anakin’s hand, pulling the blood-stained fingertips to his lips, kissing it as the handprint of it rested across his face and beard. Then, he pulled Anakin forward by his neck, kissing him, letting the red pass from his lips to Anakin’s. 

“My love runs through you, and your love through me,” Obi-Wan breathed out between their kiss as the bath water turned red. But neither man noticed at that moment. Neither man had the capacity to think or care. 

They were married in their eyes. 

And that was more than any worries the galaxy brought. 

* * *

The next morning guards came to capture Anakin and bring him before the remaining senators that weren’t on their court for a proper political trial. But they found no one. All they found were two crowns sitting on an obsidian throne—one placed a day before and a second placed recently—and an open wooden box with imprints where two distinct lightsabers should have been lying. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUSBANDS AHH!!! It's my favorite thing just SITH HUSBANDS!!!
> 
> Anyway ok thank you for letting me get that out. Please feel free to yell at me about Sith Husbands on [ tumblr. ](https://xeniaraven.tumblr.com)


End file.
